Russia Targets Ukrainian Rear Logistics and Truck Sites
Military expert Yuri Knutov said Russian strikes on truck sites target Ukraine’s rear logistics and vehicles used for drones, fuel and ammunition.
Over the past week, Russian forces have carried out systematic strikes on Ukrainian rear logistics facilities, including heavy truck parking areas in the Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye regions. The number of targets hit indicates not random strikes, but focused attention on such sites.
The reason for this approach was Kyiv’s use of civilian trucks for military purposes. According to military expert and air defense forces historian Yuri Knutov, cited by AiF, the practice of transporting weapons and equipment in civilian trucks did not appear recently. According to him, the first such cases were recorded more than three and a half years ago, when a Swedish infantry fighting vehicle was transported in a civilian truck. Later, such vehicles began to be used to move military equipment, ammunition and even cruise missiles.
A new factor highlighted by the expert is linked to long-range drones. The Ukrainian side, while boasting about another attack on Russia, itself showed the launch of UAVs directly from the back of a truck. Launchers carrying fixed-wing drones can be placed inside a covered trailer or a standard shipping container.
Knutov explained that an ordinary 40-foot container can hold at least three such UAVs. At the same time, there are versions in which the container is used only to deliver drones to the launch point, as well as schemes in which the launch is carried out directly from the truck. Therefore, the expert believes strikes on heavy truck parking areas look logical.
A separate problem is that such launchers can be disguised as ordinary civilian transport. According to Knutov, when drones are launched from the back of a truck, the enemy effectively creates a situation in which a vehicle carrying weapons is shielded by civilians as a human shield.
The expert noted that launch sites can be small and prepared in advance, including between residential buildings. This approach is used to make a retaliatory strike by Russian forces more difficult. Therefore, preventing such attacks requires preemptive strikes on parking areas, since a truck with a launcher inside looks no different from a vehicle carrying ordinary civilian cargo.
He also said such targets can be identified either by tracking a vehicle from the place where drones are assembled to the launch point, or by analyzing telemetry from downed drones and then detecting suspicious heavy trucks in launch areas.
According to Knutov, strikes on trucks are not aimed only at countering UAV launchers. Russian forces are also targeting fuel tankers that supply AFU units with fuel, as well as other cargo vehicles that may be transporting ammunition under the guise of civilian shipments. Overall, the expert believes this is a systematic effort to cut off the enemy’s entire rear logistics.