3rd Time In A Week, Russians Paraded Within Range Of Ukraine’s HIMARS

Unbelievably, they did it again.

On Tuesday, Russian troops from the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade gathered out in the open for an inspection, in broad daylight, within range of the Ukrainian army’s American-made High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems. The results, for the ill-starred 155th Brigade—a unit the Ukrainians have destroyed several times, compelling the Russians to rebuild it several times—were predictable.

A Ukrainian drone spotted the marines in their formation in Olenivka, eight miles east of the front line in eastern Ukraine.

Two Ukrainian M30/31 GPS-guided rockets rained down, each blasting 182,000 lethal tungsten balls across the parade grounds. Reportedly, 19 Russians died including a colonel and two other officers. The brigade commander, Col. Mikhail Gudkov, was wounded.

It was the third time in a week this had happened. “These are no longer isolated mistakes,” Russian war-blogger Military Informant wrote. “This is a clinical picture.”

On Feb. 20 and 21, Ukrainian forces located separate large gatherings of Russian troops within HIMARS range of the front line—and swiftly bombarded them.

The first strike targeted soldiers from the Russian army’s 39th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade in Trudivs’ke in eastern Ukraine. Two companies of infantry had lined up along with their commander, Col. G. Musaev, so that Maj. Gen. Oleg Lvovich Moiseev, commander of the 29th Combined Arms Army, could address them.

Moiseev reportedly was en route when a Ukrainian drone arrived overhead, and a HIMARS opened fire. The front line is just 20 miles to the west, around Vuhledar. A HIMARS can lob M30/31 rockets as far as 57 miles.

Video and photos shot by the survivors depict heaps of dead Russians. Reportedly 65 soldiers died, including Musaev. “They lined them up in an open field,” one survivor groused as he recorded the carnage. “Fucking commanders.”

The very next day, two groups of Russian troops again gathered out in the open for training and inspection.

The two separate formations from the 328th Air Assault Regiment, 810th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade and 81st Self-Propelled Artillery Regiment assembled in the Oleshky Sands National Nature Park just 20 miles south of the Ukrainian marine corps’ bridgehead in Krynky, on the left bank of the Dnipro River.

A Ukrainian drone located them. Ukrainian artillery—perhaps HIMARS—took aim. Another 60 or so Russians reportedly died.

The third HIMARS strike on what amounts to a Russian parade occurred just six days later. “Unteachable,” moaned Oleg Tsarev, another Russian blogger.

Why the Russians keep lining up for HIMARS target-practice is difficult to explain. Difficult, that is, until you understand the downward spiral in Russian military training and leadership.

In the two years since Russia widened its war on Ukraine, potentially 300,000—or more than 400,000, if you believe Ukrainian government claims—Russians have been killed or maimed, including perhaps 30,000 just in the four-month battle for the eastern city of Avdiivka, which culminated two weeks ago with a Ukrainian retreat and a pyrrhic Russian “victory.”

Ukrainian losses have been much lighter, of course. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky this week claimed 31,000 Ukrainian troops had died in two years, perhaps implying that another 100,000 or so had been wounded. U.S. assessments of Ukrainian casualties are somewhat higher.

In any event, no one disputes that a lot of Russians have died. So many, in fact, that the Kremlin has curtailed training for many new recruits or draftees in order to speed them to the front line within weeks of mobilizing them.

The risk, in taking the time actually to train the new troops, is the steady depletion of Russia’s 400,000-strong army of occupation in Ukraine as casualties exceed replacements.

But there’s risk in hurrying, too. “The quality of new recruits continues to deteriorate,” Ukrainian analysis group Frontelligence Insight reported this week.

“In the final phase of the battle for Avdiivka, a group of [Russian prisoners] captured in February had been recruited in mid-January,” the group explained. “This suggests hasty efforts to meet objectives by deploying available human resources despite a lack of adequate training.”

If soldiers mobilized in January were captured a month later, it’s possible—bearing in mind travel time and time in combat—they received just days of training. By comparison, Ukrainian recruits undergoing urgent training in NATO countries typically get five weeks of instruction.

Untrained troops are undisciplined troops—and troops who are unlikely to have spent much time with their leaders before it’s time to march into combat. They are, to put it graphically, the faceless “meat” in what the Ukrainians describe as Russian “meat assaults” that, even when they succeed, usually result in devastating losses for the Russians.

It should surprise no one that a Russian brigade like the 155th, destroyed and rebuilt several times and now manned by poorly-trained troops and staffed by uncaring officers, would make such a cruelly reckless mistake—and line up its fresh meat for some colonel or general to inspect. And for Ukrainian rockets to pulverize.

“Another formation, another awards ceremony, another HIMARS strike with shrapnel,” Military Informant wrote.

This will continue until the Russians start actually training and leading their troops. Or until the Ukrainians run out of M30/31 rockets for their HIMARS launchers.

The United States has been the main supplier of rockets to Ukraine’s HIMARS batteries, and Russia-aligned Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives cut off further U.S. aid way back in October. Likely meaning that every M30/31 the Ukrainians fire is an M30/31 they can’t replace.

The rockets eventually will run out, at which point it will be much safer for Russian troops to parade out in the open just miles from the front line.