Russian soldiers attempting to infiltrate Ukrainian positions through abandoned underground pipelines are surviving for often just minutes. The tactic has produced occasional results, but the Russian army continues to feed men into the system despite heavy losses and appalling conditions inside the pipes.
Russian soldiers attempting to infiltrate Ukrainian positions through abandoned underground pipelines are surviving for often just minutes. At a command post in northeastern Kharkiv Oblast, Ukrainian sergeant Tovsty of the Khartiia Brigade painted a stark picture of the emerging tactic.
Drone feeds have repeatedly captured the same unsettling scene - Russian troops surfacing from disused pipes in a bid to slip behind Ukrainian lines. A Russian soldier can hope to survive for a single hour after emerging from the underground pipeline, but it's usually 10 minutes, and that's it, he told the Kyiv Independent. The battlefield has shifted decisively underground in parts of the front.
With drones saturating the skies, exposed movement has become near-suicidal, pushing Russian forces to exploit remnants of Soviet-era gas infrastructure as cover passageways. You can't really walk on the ground now in the war of drones, so everything is done underground, Tovsty said. But what appears to be a hidden route is in reality a brutal funnel of attrition.
For months, Ukrainian units have been locked in what commanders describe as a grim whack-a-mole struggle - identifying exit points, eliminating troops as they emerge, sealing the holes, only for new openings to appear elsewhere. In an emerging tactic, Russian soldiers attempting to infiltrate Ukrainian positions through abandoned underground pipelines are surviving for often just minutes. Drone feeds have repeatedly captured the same unsettling scene - Russian troops surfacing from disused pipes in a bid to slip behind Ukrainian lines.
With drones saturating the skies, exposed movement has become near-suicidal, pushing Russian forces to exploit remnants of Soviet-era gas infrastructure as cover passageways. Despite heavy losses and what Ukrainian officers describe as appalling conditions inside the pipes, the Russian army continues to feed men into the system. The objective is Kupiansk, a strategically important town in Kharkiv Oblast near the Russian border, once occupied in the early days of the 2022 invasion before being retaken by Ukraine later that year.
Moscow has been attempting to reclaim it ever since. At the centre of the fighting are four abandoned Soviet-era gas pipelines that cross beneath the Oskil River. The infrastructure - once part of a system linking Kharkiv Oblast to Russia - now connects occupied territory with Ukrainian rear positions in the Kupiansk sector. The pipes themselves are barely passable.
Soldiers must crawl roughly 15km through narrow, 1.2-metre-wide tunnels before reaching Ukrainian lines. Four dead and around 100 injured in Ukraine after Russia pummels Kyiv with 700 missiles overnight. Some, Ukrainian commanders say, wait underground for extended periods while groups accumulate. People die in there, the brigade's deputy commander, who goes by the callsign Abat, told the Ukrainian outlet.
They are just thrown out there, their weapons stuck to their backs with duct tape so they don't lose them. Reports of the tactic first surfaced last year, with Ukrainian monitoring groups and open-source analysts describing improvised methods used inside the pipes - including wheeled benches and even electric scooters to move through the confined tunnels.
Russian media outlet Astra previously published a video in which a soldier described conditions inside another pipeline route, saying dozens of soldiers suffocated, committed suicide, or died in panic and delirium. People were going crazy there. One shot himself. One pointed a machine gun at himself.
The second one smashed his head in, he said in a video. Despite the risks, the tactic has produced occasional results. In September 2025, Russian troops reportedly managed to infiltrate the northern outskirts of Kupiansk via the pipeline network, briefly threatening the town from the north before Ukrainian forces mounted a counteroffensive and pushed them back. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky later visited the area in December 2025, rejecting Russian claims of full control.
Russian media outlet Astra previously published a video in which a soldier described conditions inside another pipeline route, saying dozens of soldiers suffocated, committed suicide, or died in panic and delirium. Despite heavy losses and what Ukrainian officers describe as appalling conditions inside the pipes, the Russian army continues to feed men into the system. Soldiers must crawl roughly 15km through narrow, 1.2-metre-wide tunnels before reaching Ukrainian lines.
For months, Ukrainian units have been locked in what commanders describe as a grim whack-a-mole struggle. Since then, Ukrainian forces say they have significantly improved their ability to counter the tactic, sealing sections of pipeline and better mapping likely exit points
Russian Soldiers Ukrainian Positions Abandoned Underground Pipelines Desperate Tactic Ukraine Invasion
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