Reviewing the Worst Combat Footage Ever

This recent Russian assault in Sversk starts with a car about to run the gauntlet of every weapon imaginable. They're trying to cross a 1,000-meter-long kill zone. Four Russian troops are packed into this old Soviet-era civilian car that's been refurbished with a coat of paint and camo net thrown on top. They're flooring it, speeding toward the Ukrainian trench line through a massive minefield. The Ukrainian soldiers from the K2 battalion have prepared for this by setting up interlocking fields of fire with their machine gun and RPG teams. The combat footage was recorded by the K2 battalion of the 54th Mechanized Brigade. A link to donate to them is in the description. The first thing that stands out to me here is that the Russian soldiers have surprisingly chosen to do this assault during daytime. This might seem like an unusual plan, but since they don't have access to night vision equipment, these soldiers are forced to make the exposed head-on assault during the most risky part of the day. Because of this, they're spotted by surveillance UAVs flying overhead almost immediately. But the reason they're doing this is so that they can safely navigate the minefield. You can see how the Russian car is weaving around, and that's because they're following in the already cleared path of the armored vehicle's treads from previous assaults. They know that following those treads is safe. These Russians are now crossing into the kill zone of machine guns and RPGs. Can they survive it? Before we dive into that, all the animations and 3D work in this video are sponsored by Aura. Aura helps you fight back against having your identity stolen, and it protects your privacy. Take a look at this 11-page report that data brokers have on everyone. It's absurdly detailed. 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I'm not leaving myself vulnerable, and you shouldn't either. The Russian soldiers appear to lean out the back of the vehicle as it's moving, and the soldier shoots a bunch of shots at the bomber drone that's tailing about 10 meters up in the air close behind the car. We can see the tracer rounds missing their target as small arms fire flies into the sky. The Russian storm unit is now well within small arms distance of the Ukrainian soldiers. And here is where a few rounds impact the vehicle. You can see it slamming into the windshield in the front. We see more bullet hits and sparks and glass flying everywhere. Even without any armor on the car, the Russian occupants got lucky and none of the shots hit them, even as the bullets ping off the vehicle. The rounds miraculously miss the driver and the Russian troops continue into a small ravine. And according to the K2 unit, this footage was taken after months of daily direct assaults by tanks and armored MTLBs and BMPs. We see evidence of the burned out husks of armor that were able to get within about 100 meters of Ukrainian fighting positions in the trenches. But this is when Russians switch tactics to using these unarmored civilian vehicles. It's tough to see from the overhead angle, but they're reaching a depression in the terrain that puts them in this ravine that is out of direct line of sight of the Ukrainian small arms fire. A Ukrainian RPG fired from about 50-100 meters away hits to the right of the Russian car, just barely missing and sending up a huge explosion. But the round was likely an anti-armor version of the RPG, which doesn't send as much shrapnel everywhere. It shows that the weapons the Ukrainians prepared were for in preparation of an armored assault, not so much for a car assault. And in this instance, it's worked in the Russian's favor because an anti-personnel RPG would have done more damage. The Russian car marked 03 on the hood there looks like something out of an apocalyptic movie with its doors ripped off, rusty exterior, and the number just painted onto the hood. The Russian strategy here using the civilian car is an attempt to gain less attention compared to using armored vehicles that have an audio and visual signature that show up more from drone surveillance. And these converted civilian cars cost nothing to lose because they're reportedly taken from citizens in the occupied territory. The Ukrainian K2 battalion has the goal of dismantling this assault group before they're able to gain a foothold. The Russian car marked 03 reaches their drop-off point here right behind the burned-out armored vehicle. From here, they're only about 50 meters away from Ukrainian positions in the trench line, according to the K2 battalion. The overhead Ukrainian UAV drops a grenade-sized munition now, and it lands directly in front of the vehicle with a huge explosion. The munition sends hundreds of small pieces of metal shrapnel flying out in this 360-degree arc, slamming into a Russian soldier. One of the four Russian soldiers has been killed while the other two make their way to a position of cover. The first soldier who disembarked from the car ran around that armored vehicle there. Instead of taking cover there, he continues pushing forward toward the trench. In this no-man's-gray-zone land here, with no cover, he's shot at with small arms rounds, and several machine-gun rounds tear through the Russian soldier and he's KIA instantly. The K2 battalion responsible for defending here is at a critical part of the front line near Sevresk in the Donetsk Oblast. Defending this location is critical because it's about protecting the northern shoulder of Ukraine's Donbass defense line, and preventing Russia from cracking open a new operational axis here. After dropping off the Russian infantry here, the driver of the car, Mark 03, turns around and he quickly makes a U-turn and heads back to the pickup site to pick up more soldiers as a battle taxi. The single lone Russian soldier left behind at the APC is the only survivor of the storm assault at this point. Small arms rounds ricochet all around him, and we see the dirt kick up from behind him from near misses. Then shots land on him, killing him after a few moments. The driver of the car, Mark 03, has made it out of the kill zone, and has almost made it home free, back a thousand meters, back towards the final tree line out of the minefield. In this final stretch, after making it through all the bombs and shots in the windshield, the driver connects with a landmine, blowing the vehicle up. The car, without any armor, is torn to pieces in explosion from the landmine. But that's just the beginning of the assault, and what happens next blew my mind. The Russian commander then sends out another car, this one marked 02. A Ukrainian soldier fires an anti-tank RPG, misses the 02 car by just a few feet. It looks like a mine is detonated, but it doesn't destroy the car, it keeps barreling forward. The second assault storm group here is making faster progress, pushing straight through the kill zone, and making it past the landmines. Here we get a good view of the trench line, and the close proximity that the Russian car is to it. It's likely that, from the vehicle's perspective, they can't see on the ground how close they are to the trench line, and they don't realize that they're right there. The strategy with minefields, when you're doing it by the book, by the field manual, is for them to get more and more dense as they get closer and closer to that trench. And there's multiple UAVs dropping grenades, and further back from here there are artillery positions. The Russian car makes it to the low point in the ravine again, that offers some cover from the small arms positions. But in between the two assaults, the Ukrainian infantry have moved through the trench line, to now find better firing lines on the Russian reinforcements. The four Russian soldiers disembark from the car, the driver even gets out this time, and makes his way over to the cover to take cover behind that same burned out armored vehicle. A repositioned Ukrainian RPG team lands a direct hit. The munition flies between them, and hits the car marked 02, detonating the fuel tank, and the explosion eliminates three of the four soldiers. A remaining Russian soldier tries to take cover in the crater, but another RPG slams into him. This Russian assault was stopped, but the new tactic here of using smaller cars and lighter vehicles, was able to get them to within 50 meters of the trench. And this strategy of head-on, full frontal, motorcycle, horses, motorized assaults, has been able to take over some Ukrainian trenches, and has gained Russia territory over the past two years. In this direction, Russia has moved forward in the last year with these type of light motorized assaults, but we see it came at a steep cost. Head-on assaults are dangerous for whoever has that job, no matter who you are. Charging head-first into the enemy defenses as a storm unit is the most dangerous assignment. You're looking at declassified combat footage here, of a dense treeline packed with Russian defenders near a canal in Bakhmut. The platoon of 30 Russians are in fighting positions in numerous shelters here, various bunkers that make up the trench system in this wooded area. It makes up a kind of belt of shelters that run about 600 meters deep. A fire team of four Ukrainian soldiers are sent to dislodge the Russians with an M113 armored vehicle that has a 50 cal machine gun mounted on top. And we'll see a surprise asset joins them at the end of the battle to turn the tide. The tactic that they're using is dismounting about 100 meters from the line of contact. They move up on foot next to the armored vehicles while it lays down suppressing fire to keep the enemy's heads down. The Ukrainians counterintuitively are outnumbered here, even though they're assaulting forward, but their APC and explosive give them a slight advantage, or at least makes it more of an even fight. Be sure to check out the 3rd Assault Brigade's YouTube channel for the full footage here. The commander is named Kolsayin Farsh. I met these 3rd Assault Brigade guys when I reported from Ukraine, and I can confirm they're hardcore. Using the suppressing fire from the vehicle as cover, the commander fires a matador shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenade launcher at the enemy only 50 meters away. This was likely a high explosive round, sending shrapnel everywhere. The fire team moves into the woods from here and begins their assault. They stay online, focusing on their field of fire directly in front of them, and they try not to get distracted too much by what's happening to their far limits to the left and right. They have to trust their buddies to cover those positions. It's important for infantry during an assault to not go into their buddy's line of fire, so they stay online while moving up. The Ukrainian commander Farsh calls his soldiers over so he can bring another anti-personnel shoulder-fired rocket. They communicate effectively and shout out the distance and direction of the enemy dugout. Farsh fires a rocket into it. They lay down a suppressive fire as they move up assaulting the objective. They've gained fire superiority, which is crucial. This allows the team to push up and advance through the tree line, making slow progress just a few meters at a time. Fighting in a wooded field is dangerous because any one of those piles of leaves could be a dugout with Russian troops in it. Any one of those branch piles could have an AK-47 waiting in it as we'll see now. Kolsign's chef gets injured, and they begin applying first aid, and then they go straight back to firing. Their rounds are landing just 10 meters in front of them, showing how far away they're aiming, showing that the enemy is right there in close combat. Kolsign, Kutcher, Anubis, and Chef are there with Farsh, and the team brings up another launcher and fires it at the enemy position. Moving up is impossible without constantly hitting with explosives. Even though these explosives are landing nearby their target, not directly on it, it may seem like they're completely missing and having no effect, but in reality, if you're standing just a few feet from one of these explosions, it's going to rock your ******* bell, and the concussive pressure from it will make it difficult to return fire accurately or at all. This volume of fire allows them to assault forward and get within hand grenade range, and they land a grenade directly in the dugout to direct hit. They put more rounds into the dugout to be sure that it's neutralized, and they throw grenades in there. As they move to the next dugout, one of the Ukrainian soldiers is hit. They provide covering fire, while another soldier recovers the wounded. Farsh begins launching grenades at the mouth of the dugout. They take a break from the assault to loot the Russian gear from the other positions for weapons that might help them push forward from here. They find a PKM, grenades, an RPG, exactly what they need. Farsh radios to the vehicle that they recovered a bunch of weapons. By now, they only cleared the first two dugouts in a long row of more and more positions that extend in front of them, but they have to continue pushing forward because the longer they wait here, the faster the Russians can organize a possible counterattack on them. The three remaining in the fire team call out, telling the Russians to surrender, but they continue to resist. You're hearing an automatic English dub here. I left that in because most of our viewers speak English, and it's a little weird to hear it sometimes, but I think that it gives us a good idea of how they're communicating in combat and what's being said. Hiding behind only a tree as cover and facing a Russian PKM machine gun team, they're unable to push forward without help, so they call for reinforcements. That's when the APC callsign Malish and a squad of 8 additional soldiers pull up. Now, we can see that the APC is positioned to their left, and they can provide better fire support as they push up. The reason they didn't have the vehicle there alongside them from the beginning is because if they did, it would have exposed this valuable asset to enemy RPG fire, and it quickly could have destroyed their ride. You can see the M113 has moved up to their left slightly ahead, about 25 meters in front, to put pressure from the side, while they pound the position with RPGs. The M113 armored vehicle lays down an automatic machine gun fire, while the drone overhead provides surveillance. The team continues their push, now able to gain fire superiority and move up with the increased firepower. They take another casualty. One of the Ukrainian infantrymen is shot as he approaches the dugout. They'll need to act quickly from here and get their casualties back to the 113 for evacuation. The Russian soldiers are observed by overhead surveillance beginning to flee their positions. What they're doing is regrouping further back at another dugout. They are trying to consolidate in the middle of this shelter system. The Russian goal is to fall back to this more advantageous position with greater and greater numbers, while attriting the Ukrainians along the way. The final dugout has 15 Russian soldiers in it, which means technically the Ukrainian soldiers do not have enough manpower to assault it. By the book, you're supposed to have a three-on-one advantage when you're assaulting, because it's much more difficult. Technically, they should have 45 soldiers, but they only have about seven. It appears that they're out of luck. Commander Farsh consolidates all of his troops for the final push, even though they don't have the manpower they need. They will have to adapt, improvise, and overcome in some other way. Farsh grabs the captured Russian PKM, starts laying down fire for the advance. One of the Ukrainian infantrymen recommends shouting at the Russians to give up. After the unit has lost two soldiers at this point, the commander replies that he doesn't need the enemy alive. The APC has moved into the woods now to better cover them. The third assault brigade at this point takes a break inside one of the Russian dugouts. They use it as cover while they plan their final advance. They're short about 30 soldiers to confidently assault this position. But this is where the buzzword force multiplier comes into action. You can make your infantry of seven be more like 45 by adding a shock factor, a tank. A Ukrainian main battle tank makes contact with them and arrives as reinforcement to help with the final dugout. The Ukrainian infantry coordinate where the enemy is with the tank commander and they ask him to drive straight over the dugout. The tank drives right over the shelter multiple times. I don't think I've seen that type of violence of action, something so aggressive as this. The Ukrainian infantry are able to move in and destroy the bunker after that. Check out this video about new reports on how US Black Ops are operating deep behind Russian lines right now, blowing up railroads and attacking oil refineries, or this playlist of other combat rundowns that I've done. If you want to see more uncensored combat rundowns, I do a weekly episode on Pepperbox.tv. The link is in the description of the video if you're interested.