Russian troops have been forced to use shovels in hand-to-hand combat in Ukraine due to a shortage of ammunition as Vladimir Putin continues to lose control of the war.
In the UK’s latest MoD update on the situation in Ukraine, mobilized Russian reservists said they had received orders to attack a concrete Ukrainian base armed only with “guns and shovels”.
The Department of Defense said that the vanes, like the MPL 50, were also likely the tools used for hand-to-hand combat.
A standard MPL 50 shovel has a mythological reputation in Russia for being particularly deadly.
The design of the shovel hasn’t changed much since it was first introduced in 1869. It is small and only 50 cm long.
In the latest Defense Ministry update on the situation in Ukraine, mobilized Russian reservists said they had been ordered to attack a Ukrainian concrete base armed only with “guns and shovels.” The Department of Defense said the vanes, like the MPL 50, were also likely the tools used for hand-to-hand combat (file image).
A standard MPL 50 shovel has a mythological reputation in Russia for being particularly deadly. The blade design has not changed significantly since its first introduction in 1869. It is small and only 50 cm long (file image).
It has been used by the military since its invention as a hand-to-hand combat weapon, for entrenching, and as an ax and hammer in the Russian Empire, then the Soviet Union, and then its successor states.
Reportedly, Soviet Spetsnaz units trained with the MPL 50 shovel for hand-to-hand combat.
The Department of Defense said the use of the shovel as a weapon “underscores the brutal and low-tech combat that characterizes much of the war.”
It added that one of the Russian reservists described being “neither physically nor mentally” prepared for the action.
In addition, there was an increase in hand-to-hand combat in Ukraine.
That’s probably because Putin keeps pushing for his infantry to attack, even though they’re low on ammunition.
The MoD update came as the founder of Russia’s Wagner mercenary force said his troops tightening their grip on the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut would be deprived of ammunition and if forced to retreat the entire front line would collapse.
“If Wagner withdraws from Bakhmut now, the whole front will collapse,” Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video released over the weekend. “The situation will not be comfortable for all military formations protecting Russian interests.”
Reuters could not independently verify when and where the video was taken. The footage was released on a Telegram channel that has been spreading Prigozhin news and has joined the Wagner group.
The video was not published on Prigozhin’s usual press service channel.
Prigozhin said on Friday that his units had “virtually surrounded Bakhmut” where fighting has intensified over the past week and Russian forces are attacking from almost all sides.
But on Sunday he lamented that most of the ammunition promised to his troops by Moscow in February had not yet been shipped.
“Right now we are trying to figure out the reason: is it just ordinary bureaucracy or treason,” Prigozhin said on his usual press service Telegram channel.
The mercenary chief regularly criticizes Russia’s defense chiefs and top generals. Last month he accused Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and others of “treason” for holding back ammunition supplies to his militia.
In a nearly four-minute video posted on the Wagner Orchestra Telegram channel on Saturday, Prigozhin said his troops were worried Moscow might want to use them as possible scapegoats should Russia lose the war.
“If we withdraw, we will forever go down in history as the people who took the most important step in defeating the war,” Prigozhin said.
“That’s exactly the problem with the ammo starvation.”
Apparently speaking from a bunker, Prigozhin said in the video that his troops would wonder if they were being “raised” to defeat by the top of the country, or perhaps even by someone “higher.”
The Wagner group has been central to Russian military effectiveness on Ukraine’s frontlines for months, after launching a mass recruitment campaign in Russian prisons last year.
The group used human wave tactics, amassing ill-equipped and ill-trained men to suck up Ukrainian resources before using better-armed and trained mercenaries to crush the exhausted Ukrainian fighters.
But since December’s demotion of Sergei Surovikin — an army general close to Prigozhin and previously in command of Russian forces — Wagner has been starved of ammunition and support.
This has raised suspicions that Russia’s military commanders Valery Gerasimov and Shoigu are smothering Wagner’s resources in order to delegitimize them in Putin’s eyes, while at the same time masking their own army’s miserable performance.
Ukrainian soldiers in a trench under Russian fire at the front near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Sunday, March 5
Although Russia regularly boasts of having one of the most advanced militaries in the world before invading Ukraine, Russia’s true capabilities have been revealed by years of warfare in which Moscow’s armies have suffered tens of thousands of casualties.
Russian failures have been attributed in part to the fact that its aging equipment in the hands of Kiev troops meets more modern western-supplied weapons.
Thousands of Russian tanks and other Soviet-era armored vehicles were destroyed, but hand-held weapons such as the US-made Javelin missile system, the HIMARs missile system, or by drone-dropped explosives.
Meanwhile, even some of Russia’s most advanced paratroopers, who were sent to seize key targets in Ukraine in the early days of the war, have since reported receiving rusty rifles and a shortage of other vital equipment.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11824349/Russian-troops-forced-use-SHOVELS-hand-hand-combat-Ukraine.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&ito=1490 Russian troops forced to use SHOVELS in hand-to-hand combat in Ukraine
