It’s Cossack to the future for the beleaguered Russian army.
The Kremlin is using horses and donkeys to transport troops and supplies on the battlefield in Ukraine — as part of an attempt to apply 15th century tactics in 21st century warfare.
The Moscow mules have allowed Russian forces to sneak by Ukraine’s high-tech defenses and dodge drones that have become deadly efficient at taking out invading armor after three years of brutal fighting.
The tactic, however, has drawn ridicule from Kyiv as evidence that Moscow is running out of trucks and armored vehicles, and forced to rely on comically outdated tactics using conscripts from Russian minority groups.
Anton Gerashchenko, a former adviser to Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs, mocked the tactic on X last month as he posted a video from Telegram reportedly showing soldiers from Sakha Republic in Russia’s far east on horseback.
“Rolling back to the times of the Russian Empire — complete with cavalry and drafting representatives of national minorities as cannon fodder,” Gerashchenko wrote.
Ukrainian Army Sgt. Ihor Vizirenko was one of the commanders who first spotted the trotting horses and donkeys on the frontline near the city of Chasiv Yar, which he has been defending for almost a year.
With drones and heavy artillery dominating the war, Vizirenko said both sides have had to innovate to get past the others’ defenses, but the Kyiv sergeant was shocked nonetheless when he spotted one of the Russian horses.
“The Russians are quite creative,” Vizirenko told the Wall Street Journal.
“But then [motor] bikes being used in assault took us by surprise, so who knows?” he added. “A horse would run faster than a man in a field.”
But far from indicating that this is the Kremlin’s last rodeo, Lt. Gen. Viktor Sobolev, a member of the Russian State Duma’s Defense Committee, said the critics should get off their high horse about the use of the pack animals.
Sobolev told Russian media the horses and donkeys are useful in traversing the muddy countryside and forests, with the animals costing less than if a resupply vehicle were deployed with several soldiers and taken out.
Experts, however, say the tactic seems to have been born more out of desperation than creativity.
“I’m not sure the resuscitation of old technology, nets, shotguns, horses, is out of choice,” Phillips O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, told the WSJ.
“They are desperate attempts to cope with unmanned aerial vehicles.”