Here is a rare GoPro video from the russian side of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war. Compared to Ukrainians, the general lack of videos from the russian side is mainly because of two reasons. First – russian commanders still force their soldiers not to use smartphones, as they believe these can be used for geopositioning of the troops which lead to further artillery strikes. While this is not far from the truth, the reason for these screw-ups is the lack of common sense of the russian soldiers and their inability to protect themselves digitally. It is not uncommon to see how russian soldiers post their frontline photos on the web with geolocation being automatically added to the posts. The second reason is more trivial – the lack of money. Russian soldiers are poorly equipped and underpaid and they would much rather spend money on winter boots or food and beverages, rather than some fancy blogging devices.
This rare video of Russian patrol ambushed is interesting. From what I understand, russian soldiers are performing a recon mission. In Soviet and Russian armies this type of mission is called “recon by fire“, which means that patrol should get a firefight started. This, in turn, should give an ability to a bigger unit – a battalion or artillery battery, to engage the precise enemy position.
While this tactic was somewhat useful at the beginning of XX century, it is certainly suicidal and useless in today’s world. Using UAVs can give much better recon results without taking any casualties. Yet again, given the lack of finance in the russian forces, it is hard for them to keep a reasonable number of UAVs on the frontline.
This particular video shows how one of these “recon by fire” Russian patrol ambushed by the Ukrainian forces. They try to return fire, but it seems rather useless and the patrol then tries to retreat with questionable results. Well, given that this video ended up on the web, it seems that at least the operator managed to get back alive
More videos on this topic can be found here
