A report on the Russian siege at Bakhmut, Ukraine:
"Ammunition shortages that may have forced some soldiers to fight using shovels have fueled new Russian infighting and threatened to undermine what could be the Kremlin’s first major victory in months.
Russian troops continued to advance through brutal close-quarters fighting around the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine despite a lack of ammunition hindering their progress, Western military analysts said over the weekend. [snip]
The British Ministry of Defense, which posts a daily intelligence briefing to social media, said Sunday that in late February Russian reservist soldiers were ordered to attack a Ukrainian position with 'firearms and shovels.'
The shovels are likely the same ones used to dig trenches and which have been used on the front line by Russian forces since days of the czars." (our emphasis)
The internal conflict between Russia's regular forces and the mercenary criminals in the Wagner Group for increasingly scarce ammunition appears to be a growing feature of their sputtering assault on Ukraine. Russia's armaments sector is corrupt, inefficient and hobbled by international sanctions, and is finding it difficult if not impossible to meet battlefront needs for either the army or the mercenaries. That the shortages are pitting them against each other like animals fighting over a bone is something that Ukraine and its western allies should exploit as much as possible by getting the weapons Ukraine needs to eject Russian forces out of Ukraine.
(photo: The Russian MPL-50 shovel. Stock photo)
