Key Points and Summary – Russia’s battlefield tactics are regressing under pressure from Ukrainian drones and mounting equipment losses.
-Leaked footage shows soldiers training for mounted assaults and using donkeys to haul ammunition and evacuate wounded through FPV-dense sectors.
T-90 Tank from Ukraine War. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
-The shift reflects depleted armor and vehicle fleets and the extreme vulnerability of engines to drone hunters.
-Experts say animals may dampen signatures but remain exposed to artillery and surveillance. Ad-hoc motorcycle raids have also bled out under cluster munitions.
-With claimed Russian losses soaring and advances reduced to tiny gains, Ukraine’s drone-driven interdiction is forcing Moscow into low-tech logistics that are slow, fragile, and easy to target—inviting more attrition.
Ammo by Donkey, Assaults on Horseback: How Ukraine’s Drones Changed the War
WARSAW, POLAND – According to leaked videos and other information from eyewitnesses, Russia’s military has had to resort to desperate measures to compensate for irreplaceable losses of equipment on the battlefield.
Total losses for all categories from February 24, 2022, to October 5, 2025, are listed below, with those for Saturday and Sunday, 4-5 October, listed separately in brackets “( )”.
Personnel – about 1,115,250 (+870)
Tanks – 11,230 (+4)
Troop-carrying AFVs – 23,299 (+1)
Artillery systems – 33,446 (+18)
MLRS – 1,516 (+1)
Anti-aircraft systems – 1,222
Aircraft – 427
Helicopters – 346
UAV operational-tactical level – 66,863 (+320)
Cruise missiles – 3,803
Warships/boats – 28
Submarines – 1
Vehicles & fuel tanks – 63,433 (+35)
Special equipment – 3,971
To continue attacks on Ukrainian positions, Russian military instructors have begun training soldiers to conduct assaults on horseback. This is a move of desperation that clearly indicates that the shortage of equipment on the front has reached crisis proportions.
It is a development that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has ridiculed as “absurd.”
Training exercises involving Russian soldiers on horseback have been caught on film at a base near Rostov-na-Donu and show conscripts galloping across muddy fields. The typical deployment involves two men on one horse, with one soldier guiding the horse while the second wields a Kalashnikov assault rifle or a grenade launcher. Russian sources are now stating these mounted units will be employed in “active assault operations”.
Each horse can bear two soldiers—one to ride and engage in combat, and another to guide the animal under fire—is the official Russian explanation. But those who are delivering the message neglect to mention that being loaded down with two men plus weapons and ammunition will condemn the horse to the slowest speed imaginable. “Slow enough that it will be an easy target for a Ukrainian drone operator,” said a Russian defense expert who spoke to National Security Journal.
Centuries Ago Warfare
Some of the same defense experts have criticized this new “tactic” as a move of desperation that hearkens back to the 19th-century warfare. This news comes on the day that a Putin ally has suggested using a Russian special forces unit to detonate a British WW2 ship that sank decades ago in the Thames River, and is loaded with munitions, as ‘revenge’.
Infantry on horseback is intended to evade Ukraine’s constantly expanding drone warfare. These unmanned suicide air vehicles have decimated Russian mechanized columns since Moscow’s invasion stalled in the summer of 2025. Michael Kofman, a Russia specialist at the Carnegie Endowment who initially estimated that Ukraine stood no chance against the Russian military, stated recently: “Horses are quieter and harder for drones to spot than engines, but they’re no match for modern artillery or anti-tank missiles.”
Western intelligence estimates that Russian vehicle losses have exceeded 15,000 since February 2022. These include 1,400 main battle tanks in 2024, with Moscow reduced to pulling older model tanks from reserve depots, boneyards, and even museums.
It was first reported in March 2025 by Ukrainian observers that Russian soldiers were now using horses to move about on the battlefield. The same sources reported that donkeys were becoming the mode of transport for ammunition and wounded soldiers that needed to pass through heavily drone-covered areas near Avdiivka in the Donbas.
“Vehicles”, said one Ukrainian defense industry executive who visits the front line regularly, “have become easy targets for our drones. They have about a zero chance of survivability on the front.”
Donkey Express in Ukraine?
A video dating back to February showed a donkey loaded down with artillery shells struggling down a Russian military supply route. The soldier guiding the donkey was able to dodge the Ukrainian FPV suicide attack drones successfully.
The explanation for using this mode of transport was provided later in a message intercepted by Ukraine’s military intelligence service. The Russian soldier was reported to have said over the military radio waves, “Our defense ministry sent us a donkey because we have no trucks left.”
Improvised motorized assault alternatives have proven just as catastrophic for the Russian military. Since the summer of 2024, Russian assault teams have been using off-road motorcycles equipped with RPG launchers that sometimes resemble vehicles from a “Mad Max” film. They were previously deployed in both the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions. Those units ended up incurring severe losses from Ukrainian cluster munitions.
Monitoring by different Western organizations now charts Moscow’s advances into Ukrainian territory as being reduced to incremental. In September, this amounted to only 20 square kilometers.
On his Telegram channel, President Zelensky ridiculed the levels to which Russia’s military operations had deteriorated. “From T-90 [tanks] to ponies – Putin’s empire in full gallop backwards,” he said.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
More Military
The U.S. Navy’s Big Aircraft Carrier Mistake Still Stings
Russia’s Big Su-57 Felon Stealth Fighter Mistake Still Stings
Why the F-111B Fighter Still Haunts the U.S. Navy
Jim
October 6, 2025 at 5:37 pm
Oh, please (I’m smiling) donkeys!
I hear donkeys do great work!
Hauling that kit.
Actually, I believe it.
But this drone warfare with kill zones for both sides (although favoring Russia) makes dispersal of forces and not being seen a premium and donkeys fit into that quite nice…
Russia hasn’t been using tanks or armored fighting vehicles, but dune buggies & dirt bikes… and, hey, donkeys, for maximum speed and maximum dispersal of forces… donkeys follow up from the rear… quiet, night arrivals for needed resupply.
“Where would We be without that damn ass donkey brigade! Let’s hear it for the donkey brigade!”
Tanks stick out like a sore thumb in a high-drone environment like what both sides have in their own respective kill zones. (Which fluctuate & change with the winds of the war.)
Literally, three, four, five man units go out on flanking maneuvers… then down the trench.
21st Century Warfare:
In some ways, technology we haven’t seen before, but always underneath, the men who fight the war…
… down the trench.
This war is as granular as any.
Men fighting men in hand to hand combat.
Timeless… like those donkeys!