A Lada compact car—totally unarmored and weighing just a ton or so—is already pretty vulnerable on the drone-patrolled, artillery-pocked front line of Russia’s 37-month wider war on Ukraine. Toss a 20-pound TM62 anti-tank mine in the back, and a Lada goes from flimsy to catastrophically explosive.
After a month-long pause, during which the Kremlin’s priority was to eject a strong Ukrainian force from western Russia’s Kursk Oblast, the Russians are on the attack again outside Pokrovsk, a fortress city in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast. Their supply lines cut, the Ukrainians have retreated from Kursk. That has freed up resources for a fresh Russian push on Pokrovsk.
But the Russians have already squandered some of those resources—a dozen armored vehicles including at least one modern T-90M tank—on a failed push through a swarm of drones on Thursday. Still short of modern vehicles despite the relief in Kursk, many Russian assault groups are riding into battle in Ladas, Buhanka vans, GAZ-69 trucks and other civilian vehicles.
“Assault time,” analyst Andrew Perpetua mused. “Everyone into the Lada.”
Lada assaults often end in disaster for their drivers and passengers as the 16-foot-long compact cars run over mines or get peppered by artillery or chased down by explosive first-person-view drones.
Atomization
Where a 40-ton tank might shrug off a dozen FPVs before succumbing to the 13th drone, an Lada—even one with an add-on anti-drone cage—rarely survives a single strike. Moreover, the cars are prone to getting mired on the soft spring soil in Ukraine, making them especially easy targets.
It’s already practically suicidal to attack entrenched Ukrainian troops in a Lada. It’s even deadlier when the Lada is, for some reason, packing a TM62 mine with enough explosive potential to immobilize a tank. “Anti-tank mines in your Lada can get you atomized really quickly,” explained analyst Moklasen.
Lada-atomization is exactly what happened when a Russian regiment attacked a few miles south of Pokrovsk on March 19. Russian troops often carve that backs off their assault cars’ cabs in order to facilitate a quick exit, so there was nothing but a possible thin screen to stop an FPV that barreled toward the anti-tank mine resting in the back of one idling Lada.
It exploded in a fireball that may have been 100 feet tall.