October 15, 2024: Russian troops have been seizing civilian vehicles since the Ukraine invasion began in 2022. Russian troops needed transportation but didn’t have enough trucks to handle all the people and supplies that had to be delivered to troops in Ukraine to keep the war going. The vehicles were seized from Ukrainian living or dead civilians. Some vehicles were donated by patriotic or threatened Russian civilians back home. Russian soldiers are still using these vehicles because the Russian military cannot deliver enough trucks and other military vehicles due to Ukrainian UAVs constantly destroying them.

To deal with the continuing vehicle shortage, Russian troops continue to drive around in civilian cars and trucks. Russian military police noticed this and many of them realized there was an opportunity to make some money by stopping these vehicles at checkpoints and accusing the Russian soldiers of driving unregistered vehicles. These cars and trucks were confiscated by Russian troops who cared little about official documents for their recently appropriated vehicles. Russian military police began stopping these vehicles and demanding that the Russian soldiers using them produce proper documents or else the military police would seize the vehicle. The soldiers realized this was a scam by their own military police to seize and either resell or drive the vehicle back to Russia as their own. Who is going to hassle a military policeman about registration documents.

Russian military police had a reputation for being corrupt and opportunistic. Russian combat soldiers were angry as these rear area bullies were seeking to steal the stolen vehicles the soldiers were using. At times the military police just wanted the fuel in the soldiers' vehicles so the military police could keep their own vehicles going. This was, after all, a combat zone rear area and fuel resupply was haphazard.

No matter who ended up with these civilian cars and trucks, there were other dangers. Russian forces have been losing a lot of unarmored vehicles, including civilian cars and trucks because of the many explosive items encountered in the combat zone, especially if you leave the roads and travel cross country. There are man-made dangers in doing this.

There are a lot of UXO (UneXplOded munitions) out there because of the many Russian artillery shells and missiles that failed to detonate on impact. The percentage of Russian shells and missiles that become UXOs is much higher than for Ukrainian munitions. The Russians also use a lot more artillery and missile fire. Experience has shown that the fuzes of unexploded munitions sometimes function when anyone attempts to move them deliberately or accidentally (as in during construction or rubble clearance). Landmines are banned by the Ottawa Convention international treaty, but dud shells and improvised explosives UXO are not. Improvised explosive traps (IETs) are a war crime and have always been. There are over a hundred Ukrainian demining teams consisting of local volunteers trained by Ukrainian and foreign experts with experience in landmine and UXO detection and removal. Current estimates are that nearly 180.000 kilometers of Ukrainian territory are contaminated with mines and UXOs.

Finding and clearing landmines is relatively easy compared to non-landmine UXOs. These can be anywhere there was combat and have always been a more common problem. UXOs from both World Wars and more recent conflicts are still a problem, requiring the maintenance of local emergency teams to handle old UXOs that are still being discovered. That will apply to parts of Ukraine for a long time. There are not many World War Two UXOs in Ukraine because there was not a lot of sustained combat on stationary fronts, and few aerial bombs compared to Germany, which was pounded for years by American and British heavy bombers. Currently about 160,000 square kilometers of Ukraine are contaminated, mainly with unexploded dud shells, rockets, hand grenades and some buried stockpiles of explosives. The longer the fighting goes on the more UXOs will be created.

Russia did not use landmines in Ukraine until the 2022 invasion and have been using them in any territory they retreat from if they have time. These landmines are recently manufactured models that usually work, rather than turn into UXOs as many older or improvised landmines do. Russia denies this but the landmines found are easily identified as Russian designs. Leaving behind landmines and IETs indicates the Russians don’t believe they will reoccupy that territory anytime soon and don’t care about local civilians killed or wounded by these devices.

Currently Russian landmines and IETs are being used in Kherson province north of Crimea. The mines tend to be anti-personnel and anti-vehicle models delivered by rocket launchers. Landmines, emplaced manually by troops or engineers, are older models, some dating back to the 1950s that have been kept in storage ever since. Many of these prove to be duds used to slow down the advancing Ukrainians, who expect Russian landmines and have troops trained to uncover them so they can be destroyed from a distance.

Russians and Ukrainians living in Crimea and parts of Donbas occupied since 2014 fear that Russia will leave behind landmines and IETs if the Ukrainians liberate these areas and that is making the locals nervous. Russians are leaving because of that, as well as the increasing Ukrainian partisan activity in Crimea and Donbas. Ukrainian collaborators are also leaving, even if they are tolerated but not really welcome in Russia. The partisans often attack the Ukrainian collaborators using IETs planted in automobiles, or just gunfire.