Images of Russian tanks struggling through mud in the Rostov region, near the southeastern border with Ukraine, they have been sharing on social networks for the last few days. Nearly a dozen tanks, including older T-72s, they could be seen sinking into the deep mud. The situation seemed so bad that a construction bulldozer was brought in to help free the Russian machinery.
The Russian expression “tanks are not afraid of mud” is so common that it has been the title of a television series and can be found emblazoned on car windows. Muddy conditions have long been a problem for those who have dared to invade Russia over the centuries. From the Mongols to the Nazis, many armies have become bogged down during the late fall and early spring seasons of the year, when it becomes difficult to travel on unpaved roads across the vast open plains.
Video, possible from the range in Rostov region. Digger helping tanks stuck in the mud pic.twitter.com/jGFTL5puki via @4emberlen
— Liveuamap (@Liveuamap) February 10, 2022
Signs are emerging that Russia may be delaying its invasion of Ukraine for this very reason. In addition to fears of sanctions from the West and the strong determination of NATO members, perhaps it may also be about the mud. Climate, terrain, and warfare in Eastern Europe are so closely intertwined that the concept has a specific word: Rasputitsa. It literally means “wayless time”.
Such conditions hampered Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812. wreaked havoc on Nazi Germany’s offensive against Moscow in 1941. “The roads became bottomless mud channels, along which our vehicles could only advance at a snail’s pace and with great engine wear,” lamented Heinz Guderian, a German general, that October. “Ukrainian mud in spring has to be seen to be believed. The whole country is flooded and the roads are like rivers, often half a meter deep,” a journalist noted during a Soviet offensive in 1944.
The “mud season” was a crucial factor in the failure of Operation Barbarossa in 1941. At least partially. Autumn fell upon them and when they wanted to advance as they did in France in 1940, they ran into a tremendous quagmire. The tanks were leaking, the soldiers could hardly walk, the distribution lines became very complicated. This slowed down the pace of the invasion, causing them to reach Moscow on the verge of the worst winter in 100 years and never be able to take it. The rest is history, but mud as a logistical problem in the invasion of any territory beyond Warsaw is a legend in itself.
As hundreds of tanks pass through the same terrain, they shake it up even more. A German Panzer division on the Eastern Front in 1941 covered 76 km in 15 hours; the next group barely covered 10 km, noted CE Wood in Mud: A Military History. Modern tanks, while more advanced in many ways, are not immune to this problem. Thus, the spring thaw is likely to affect what Kurak calls “maneuver lanes,” or the routes that Russian armored units can take. But it won’t necessarily stop them.
But that is precisely why Russian machinery is designed to be lighter, faster, and simpler than its Western counterparts. A Russian T-90 tank, for example, weighs 46 tons; compared to 62 tons for a German Leopard 2A6. Russian forces are also designed with amphibious and air-droppable capabilities. Russia’s naval infantry and airborne units are already massing on the Ukrainian border, though these lighter forces lack the “hitting power” of heavy armor.
The infrastructure also alleviates the impact of rasputitsa. Paved roads, rare in the 1940s, provide better avenues of advancement, but they are not a panacea. Heavy tank traffic could damage their surfaces, slowing down follow-on forces. Tank commanders also don’t like having to stick to predictable routes, which can be more easily mined, ambushed, or attacked with artillery and missiles. However, Ukrainian forces would face the same restriction, with the added potential problem of roads becoming congested with civilians fleeing west.
Russian troops are already experiencing it
On this fantastic Twitter thread from Trent Telenkowho was a DCMA quality auditor in charge of the US Army’s FMTV “vehicle exercise program”, explained the implied poor maintenance practices of Russian Army trucks based on several photos of rear tires of a Pantsir-S1 system and the operational implications during the mud season in Ukraine.
This is a thread that will explain the implied poor Russian Army truck maintenance practices based on this photo of a Pantsir-S1 wheeled gun-missile system’s right rear pair of tires below & the operational implications during the Ukrainian mud season.🧵
—Trent Telenko (@TrentTelenko) March 2, 2022
“When you leave military truck tires in one place for months. Sidewalls rot or they become brittle, so that using a low tire pressure setting for any appreciable distance will cause tires to fail catastrophically through tearing,” he explained. And there is photographic evidence of this. There are more than 60 Russian army trucks packed and parked on this raised roadbed to avoid the fate of the mud-bogged Pantsir-S1.
Given the demonstrated levels of wear and tear in truck maintenance. It is impossible that there are enough tires in the logistics system of the Russian army. Therefore, your fleet of AFVs and wheeled trucks is so limited by the road as were the columns of the Russian army in the First Russo-Finnish War.
What that means is that, while and wherever the Rasputitsa spring is happening, the Ukrainians can block the road with destroyed ATGM vehicles, while the Russians will find it difficult to advance on other terrain. It may be too early to tell if “Rasputitsa” is keeping the peace, but no one should underestimate the power of Eastern European mud.