Instead of taking the small town of Wuhledar, a column of Russian tanks retreated in panic. The reason for their failure is reportedly a new tactic used by Ukraine: distributing mines with artillery pieces.
Russia’s attempted attack on Wuhledar may have been thwarted by a new Ukrainian anti-tank tactic, specifically its mine-laying tactic. According to US magazine Forbes, Ukrainian troops are waiting until Russian troops have cleared a path through a minefield and then deploying new mines when the Russians cross it. Accordingly, these mines are not laid as usual, but fired by artillery shells.
Russian bloggers attribute the failure of the attack on Wuhledar to anti-tank mines fired by Ukrainian 155mm howitzers, i.e. as cluster munitions. In the “Remote Anti-Armor Mine” (RAAM) system, each projectile contains nine mines. The United States delivered 6,000 such missiles to Ukraine at the end of last year, according to the Forbes report.
It describes a well-known pattern: the lead tank hits a mine and explodes, causing the rest of the column to become confused. Some vehicles tried to drive around the destroyed lead vehicle, but encountered mines themselves in the process. Even the retreat is dangerous, since mines are also threatening behind the column. Around Wuhledar, the Russian troops lost 30 armored vehicles in a single day alone.
According to military bloggers, a Russian tank column ran into a minefield and came under heavy artillery fire about a week ago outside the small town of Wuhledar, southwest of Donetsk. The Russian units obviously panicked and fled. The scene also shows a video circulating online released by Ukraine’s Defense Ministry.
In its daily situation report on Friday, the British Ministry of Defense reported that Russian troops had suffered “particularly heavy losses” near Wuhledar. Military bloggers called for the commanders to be punished. British secret services and the US think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW), on the other hand, pointed to the poor training of the inexperienced units.
