Ukrainian Drones Followed Russian Bike Troops Back To Their Dugout

Watching and waiting outside the ruins of Ulakly in eastern Ukraine in recent days, Ukrainian drones demonstrated how Kyiv’s drone crews and artillery gunners work together to spot, track, fix and finish off Russian assault troops.

Seeing what their drone saw, an operator from the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces’ 413th Separate Battalion spotted movement in a treeline, presumably outside Ulakly where the battalion has been active lately.

The movement turned out to be Russian troops. Nearby, there was more movement: Russians on motorcycles, speeding along a dirt road. The 413th Separate Battalion followed the Russians. “The enemy is leading us to one of their shelters,” the battalion narrated in a video montage.

After losing more than 15,000 armored vehicles in Ukraine, Russian commanders increasingly send assault troops into battle on motorcycles. Typically, the bike troops lead an assault, speeding into new positions to secure safe lodgments for follow-on forces including increasingly precious tanks and other armored vehicles.

Blunting an assault

A Russian assault is most fragile before the tanks arrive. Which explains why the 413th Separate Battalion moved so swiftly to eliminate the growing lodgement of bike troops outside Ulakly. Pinpointing the Russians’ dugout, the battalion sent in explosive first-person-view drones.

The FPVs blasted uncamouflaged motorcycles. Meanwhile, artillery bombarded exposed Russian troops. Finally, a second wave of FPVs maneuvered into the dugout to finish off any survivors. “The bunker, along with its personnel, has been destroyed,” the 413th Separate Battalion reported.

The successful Ukrainian operation is indicative of wider trends. The Russians are still advancing west of Ulakly after their 39th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade captured the town in mid-February, but elsewhere Russian gains are slowing. In some sectors, the Russians are actually retreating as Ukraine concentrates forces for local counterattacks.

Around the fortress city of Pokrovsk, a key Ukrainian stronghold in eastern Ukraine, Russian assaults are down 80 percent compared to their recent peak in mid-January, according to Ukrainian analysis group DeepState. The Ukrainian brigades in the city have begun pushing back.

It’s possible Russian regiments are exhausted after more than a year of relentless offensive operations that have cost them a thousand or more casualties a day on the worst days, and also depleted their stocks of armored vehicles.

In that sense, U.S. President Donald Trump’s timing couldn’t be worse for Ukraine—or better for Russia.

Following a disastrous Oval Office press conference on Friday, during which Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance lambasted a bewildered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for purportedly being insufficiently grateful for U.S. aid to Ukraine, Trump halted U.S. aid to Ukraine and also suspended intelligence sharing with Kyiv.

Trump is cutting off the Ukrainians, and taking some pressure off the Russians, just as the Ukrainians—with their increasingly deadly drones and artillery—may be on the cusp of turning the tide of the wider war.