But the occasional bike attack leads a wider Russian advance.
As the Russian military loses more armored vehicles in Ukraine than it can immediately replace, and sends more troops into battle on motorcycles, there are tragic consequences for the riders.
Not only are bike troops totally exposed to Ukrainian drones, artillery and mines—they may also be tempted to try feats of motorcycle aerobatics that would be difficult in peacetime, and are nearly impossible on the battlefield.
As a Ukrainian drone observed on or just before Thursday, a Russian bike soldier raced, in broad daylight, across the no-man’s-land somewhere along the 700-mile front line of Russia’s 39-month wider war on Ukraine. His luck held, at first. No mines or shells exploded. No first-person-view drones swooped down.
But then he neared the simplest possible defense: a hole in the ground. Specifically, a long anti-tank ditch seemingly around 20 feet across and 20 feet deep. Apparently confident in his bike-handling, the rider accelerated up the loose dirt piled up on the edge of the trench, clearly aiming to jump the trench.
He fell short—and died, or was badly injured, in the resulting crash.
Stunt riders such as the late Evel Knievel routinely jump their motorcycles hundreds of feet. But they usually do so after careful planning—and rarely on loose dirt ramps.
