The russians have been increasingly often using motorcycles for assault operations on the Ukrainian war front. For example, on April 17, 2025, the invaders launched a massive assault on the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Pokrovsk axis and lost 240 people, 20 different armored vehicles and almost 100 motorcycles in the process.
For a reminder, first reports of motorcycles sighted in the russian invasion forces appeared in April 2024, and the practice has gained traction over the past year. Therefore, the question: why would russians adopt the tactic, especially since their defense ministry had retired two-wheelers back in 2011 as ineffective?
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The most plausible motive would be that practical experience has proven motorbikes to be a difficult target for artillery and drones to deal with, and the russian commanders now consider such transport optimal for attempts at a rapid breakthrough to enemy lines.
In this context, such a factor as shortage of proper armored vehicles is often mentioned but it's likely secondary, if not negligible, in terms of importance. That is also because russian war tactics rely on a combination of infantry operations, drone strikes, traditional artillery, and close support aviation with guided bombs. In this framework, tanks and other armored vehicles usually have only a supporting role.
As mentioned in the beginning, utilizing motorbikes in the russian army wasn't really unprecedented in general, although the idea behind the practice was originally different.
For example, in 2010, the russian Ministry of Defense wanted motorcycles with anti-tank missile mounts to deploy them as a type of assault vehicles. Irbitsky Zavod plant took the order and modified the Ural combat bike; the upgraded model, designated the IMZ-8.1037 GEAR-UP, featured turrets for a PKMB machine gun and the Konkurs-M ATGM. But in the end, the russian defense department didn't buy this development.
Moreover, in 2011, the ministry decided to completely discard motorcycles as a type of military transport citing low protection and unsuitability for performing battlefield reconnaissance missions because of high noise levels.
In subsequent years, however, russian airborne units still occasionally returned to using motorcycles and other light wheeled vehicles for various tasks during various exercises, as evidenced by photos from social networks. Defense Express assumes that those pre-invasion episodes later became the basis for deployment of bikes nowadays.
Delving deeper into the history, we should recall World War II times, when the USSR produced 17,000 M-72 motorcycles and received almost 30,000 other types from the USA under the Lend-Lease program, but still a far cry from the Wehrmacht where even an infantry division was supposed to have 500 motorcycles. The total number of motorcycles supplied to German forces from 1934 to 1940 amounted to as many as 123,300 vehicles.
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