The Russian-controlled militants in the Donbas are actively using coronavirus quarantine restrictions as an excuse for denying access to monitors of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), while Russia continues its secret night convoys across the border quite unimpeded. Even if there is no direct proof that the most recently spotted cargo and military-type vehicles brought military technology, ammunition or other instruments of death into occupied Ukraine, it is reasonable to ask why else would such movements occur at night, on dirt roads, in places where there are no border crossing facilities nearby.
Recent reports of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) drones coming under gunfire in the non-government-controlled Donbas may have nothing to do with the convoys, but this would not be the first time that the long-range unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) had been jammed or downed after sighting military hardware crossing into militant-controlled Ukraine from Russia.
Russia has never stopped trying to deny its active military and other involvement in the Donbas war and its control of the two proxy “Donbas and Luhansk people’s republics.” During the preliminary hearings into Ukraine’s suit against Russia at the United Nations International Court of Justice in March 2017, in part over alleged violation of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, one of the Russian representatives claimed that the militants’ weapons and military hardware were stockpiles inherited by Ukraine in 1991 from the Soviet Army, as well as “the retreating Ukrainian army.”
Russia failed to convince the Court at the Hague that the latter did not have jurisdiction over this claim, and Ukraine now has the chance to prove violation of the convention, including through direct supplies to the pseudo “republics.” All such evidence is also important for the International Criminal Court, which is still investigating to what degree the conflict in the Donbas constitutes an international armed conflict.
The following are doubtless not the only convoys of military trucks that travel by night in places where they are clearly not supposed to be observed, but even the number of those that have been spotted is incriminating.
June 7-8, 2020
In its daily report on June 10, the OSCE SMM reported that its long-range UAV had, on the night of June 7-8, spotted three covered cargo trucks on the southern edge of Manych (76 kilometers east of Donetsk). One of the vehicles was driving along a dirt road towards the border with Russia, stopping around 200 meters from the border. This was in the area that is not under Ukrainian government control, and where there are no border crossing facilities. The UAV also detected a car driving away from the border towards these cargo trucks in Manych.
Two kilometers southeast of Stepne, the UAV “also spotted nine probable vehicles near a tree line near about 160 meters west of a dirt road leading to the border with the Russian Federation.”
June 4-5, 2020
The above was nothing in comparison with the flurry of activity involving military vehicles during the night of June 4-5. On June 6, the OSCE reported that its UAV had seen “a convoy of trucks entering Ukraine and another convoy exiting Ukraine on a dirt road, in a non-government-controlled area of Luhansk region near the border with the Russian Federation where there are no border crossing facilities.”
The first sighting was at 20:40 [the military time for 8:40 p.m.] on June 4 when the “UAV spotted at least 12 probable military-type trucks and an escort light utility vehicle in a stationary convoy pointing east on a dirt track and five persons walking in between the trucks.” All of this was around 120 meters west of the border with Russia and, needless to say, “in an area where there are no border crossing facilities.”
Soon afterwards, three other military-type vehicles and another vehicle joined the convoy after arriving on the same dirt track from a westerly direction. Then, between 20:52 and 21:22 two of the military-type trucks crossed the border out of Ukraine, with this leaving 14 military-type trucks, vehicles and escort remaining stationary. Shortly afterwards, two light utility vehicles entered Ukraine and went up to the 14-military-type vehicles and escort. One stopped near the convoy, while the other continued on, via the dirt track to near Cheremshyne.
At around 22:10, a second convoy of five military-type trucks entered Ukraine, passed by the stationary convoy and moved westwards.
All of this was clearly coordinated, with the five military-type trucks being joined at 22:55 by three probable military-type vehicles and two others that had arrived from an easterly direction. This convoy, now made up of 10 vehicles, eventually arrived in militant-controlled Luhansk.
The other convoy had, in the meantime, left Ukraine via the uncontrolled border with the Russian Federation.
This appears to have been the first such sightings, at least in this area, since early October 2019.
October 3, 2019
In the night of October 3, 2019, a UAV “spotted three probable trucks arriving on a dirt road from the direction of Manych and leading to the border in a place without border crossing facilities.” One remained at the border, a second crossed into Russia, while the third, which was probably a KamAZ military truck, returned westward.
The same UAV also spotted “six vehicles (possible trucks) arriving in a convoy from an easterly direction on a dirt road and stopping near agricultural buildings, about 1.7 kilometers east of Cheremshyne.”
August 22, 2019
The UAV sighting during the night of August 22, 2019, was more modest, though still of note given the fact that there were two, possibly three, cargo trucks travelling between an area adjacent to the border with Russia and where there is no border crossing facility and a junction outside Manych.
July 22, 2019
On that occasion, eight trucks were spotted by the UAV, with three probably tanker trucks, and four with trailers attached. They were stationary and on a dirt road close to the border with Russia, around 2 kilometers southeast of non-government-controlled Stepne.
July 5, 2019
The OSCE SMM reported on July 13 that aerial footage from July 5 showed at least five trucks, also around 2 kilometers southeast of Stepne. Aerial footage was also detected in two places of either five or three fresh vehicle tracks leading to the border.
June 14, 2019
Over a space of one and a half hours (from 01:01 to 02:42) during the night of June 14, an SMM drone spotted military trucks travelling between a railway station and a warehouse in Sukhodilsk, near the border with the Russian Federation. The drone saw five military trucks at the train station itself, “in a position to load and unload cargo,” and also eight military trucks parked at the front and to the east of the main train station building.
May 30 to June 3, 2019
On the night from May 30 to June 1, an SMM drone saw three military type trucks on an unpaved road near Cheremshyne (2 kilometers from the border). Then another such truck and car were seen coming from a dirt track running in parallel to the first. All these vehicles formed a convoy that headed to a place on the outskirts of non-government-controlled Luhansk where there were other military-type trucks and where men could be seen unloading the trucks.
There were smaller sightings near the border during the night of June 2-3 as well.
The drones make it impossible for Russia to rely solely on darkness and dirt roads. There have been several occasions when drones were jammed at around the same time as they detected such convoys, and once a drone was shot down.
On October 27, 2018, a UAV was first jammed and then brought down after it spotted a Russian military weapon system, as well as “a convoy of seven trucks on a dirt road near the border with the Russian Federation where there are no border crossing facilities.”
The downing of the drone prompted a strongly worded Joint Statement from France and Germany. This condemned the downing of the UAV, and stated that: “Evidence collected by SMM suggests Russia and the separatists it backs bear responsibility for the targeting and downing of the LR UAV, blinding the mission at this particular spot.” The joint statement then elicited a rather bizarre response from Marina Zakharova, Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson. She claimed that the route of a drone whose very purpose is to detect what might otherwise remain safely concealed should have been agreed in advance with the so-called “Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics” (DPR, LPR).
The incident on October 27 was the second that month when jamming was used in connection with sightings of sophisticated military hardware.
On October 10, 2018, the jamming began after the UAV spotted a Ural truck mounted with an anti-aircraft-gun (ZU-23, 23mm) on a dirt road around 2 kilometers from the border, as well as other movement. On that occasion, the SMM managed to recall the UAV “due to multiple instances of GPS signal loss assessed as jamming.”
There have also been sightings on (at the very least) the following dates: August 7, 2018; September 4-5, 2018; October 9-10, 11-12 and 16-17, 2019.
It should be stressed that these are only the secretive night convoys. Since August 2014, Russia has been bringing effectively unchecked convoys by day, claiming these to be “humanitarian.” There are reasons to believe this is not the case. Russia has also made sure that the OSCE Mission’s mandate was seriously limited.