Mud, Drones, and the AMX-10 ‘Wheeled Tank’. A Day with Ukrainian Marines Near Pokrovsk, in Photos

Carcasses of burned cars emerge from the fog along the destroyed Donbas roads. Besides the occasional military vehicles and heavy artillery, we’re the only civilians driving here.

The crooked skeletons of houses ruined by the war scatter the surroundings, an eerie vision and a painful reminder of the trail of destruction the Russians left behind not so long ago. 

Donbas roads have never been safe, but the winter rain makes them worse than usual. The fog is soon replaced by a freezing torrent that makes every turn dangerously slippery. 

We’re near Pokrovsk, a key city in Donbas and one of the hottest spots on the frontline. With the pouring rain, the road is treacherous as hell—the good thing is that Russian drones will have a hard time flying in this weather. 

Now that the fog has lifted, we have to drive fast. Luckily, the occasional round of military cars and their electronic warfare antennae, cutting off the drones’ signals, bring a strange feeling of comfort.

Everyone activates “plane mode” anyway since we’re heading to the 37th Ukrainian Marine Brigade’s position, one of many strategic outposts scattering the frontline. 

The press officer gave us coordinates to meet at the crossroads of a deserted road. Once we arrived, it's time to gear up, just in case. 

We wait silently for long minutes, counting on each next sporadic car to be the press officer, when a massive SUV suddenly parks behind us, flashing its lights through the apocalyptic weather. 

Nastia*, the press officer, is far from the cliché of the taciturn soldier. Yet, the signs of war show on her thin face, starkly contrasting with the amount of swear words she punctuates every sentence.

One hand on the wheel, one on her vape, she doesn’t mince her words when explaining how bad the frontline is at the moment. The details of our conversation will remain in this car because it’s off the record—yet it’s no secret that the situation is grim due to a lack of manpower and weapons.

This is why Ukraine’s military had to make the most of what they received from the West, adapting equipment like the French AMX-10 RC armored fighting vehicle (AFV), first deemed too fragile for this kind of battlefield.

A few batches

The Russians are closing in on Pokrovsk mainly through Kurakhove, a small town near Pokrovsk. Like many units here, the Marines are struggling to get enough men to contain them. 

The weapons arrive too slowly, Nastia explains, gripping the wheel. The car turns all of a sudden and engages in a wood. The position is inconspicuous from afar, but the typical signs of a human presence soon show up. ‘

Ammo crates here and there, a small generator for the men to resist the harsh Ukrainian winter, and some cigarettes scattered everywhere are a testament to the long waiting hours before an order is given.

Under a makeshift tent, the AMX-10 crew expects its next order. Their military fatigue trickling with rain, they’re smoking and discussing loudly, even cracking jokes despite their evident weariness. When asked about the state of the front, there’s no way to avoid the truth.

“So-so,” one of them answers, waving his hand. They won’t give much more details on the camera, but the Russians are assaulting their positions every day, and the casualties are mounting. 

Roughly half a million Russian soldiers were killed as of December 2024, according to the US-based think tank Institute for the Study of War. 

France has stepped up to the challenge and answered Ukraine’s call for weapons, providing a few brigades with AMX-10 RC, light infantry vehicles nicknamed “wheeled tanks,” usually designed to transport troops in reconnaissance missions.

The AMX-10 was first created in the 80s for French expeditionary forces, where they mostly faced pickup trucks and machine guns from various terrorist groups, mostly in desert mission-style combat missions. 

However, with its 1.5 centimeters of armor, the AMX-10 is ill-equipped for frontal assaults. Ukrainian soldiers learned it the hard way during the botched 2023 counteroffensive, where they lost a few, but it was a lesson to turn things around and use the AMX-10 differently.

Its main asset? Speed. The AFV can reach 85 km per hour. Yet, the mud complicates everything here, especially with the vehicles’ eight tires that tend to get stuck in the surrounding sludge. 

The rain makes everything muddy and slippery, a weather that can turn deadly for soldiers stuck in such a vehicle or when they have to run to assault a position. 

“The machine is good, but you see the weather, and it’s not the best. But in dry weather, it works great,” the driver, callsign “Shaman” tells us before dragging on a cigarette and insisting on the need for new quality tires to replace the old ones.

Adapting weapons

The AMX-10 is armed with a massive 105 mm rifled gun protruding from a turret. The then-Defense Minister of Ukraine, Oleksii Reznikov, called it a “sniper rifle on ... fast wheels” after a test drive in April 2023.

This asset allowed Ukrainians to turn it into a self-propelled artillery gun to shoot up to 7 kilometers at the highest cannon angle. 

The units bet on the AMX-10’s accuracy rather than its armor to act as fire support rather than in close combat, where the vehicle will not withstand a tank’s shell shot, likely dooming the crew to heavy wounds or death. 

It’s easy to understand after sitting down in the cramped cabin. Red, the commander, got his callsign by his brothers-in-arms for his face’s untimely blushing. 

He’s a young man in his 20s who prefers to hide behind his balaclava for safety reasons. Red was trained in France.

“We continue to fight as we should and have some experience with this machine now,” Red says proudly. “By the grace of God, we’ll stay alive and continue fighting that way.”

Red, like many, has family on the rear, and some higher power’s help won’t be too much for these men who have been fighting for three years already, being deployed from one hot spot to another without respite. 

The commander doesn’t hide the situation is tough. 

The Russians reportedly captured the vast majority of Kurakhove despite losing well over 1,000 men a day, according to Ukraine’s General Staff.

The Russians are positioned 5 to 7 kilometers from Pokrovsk, a key hub to capture the entire Donetsk region, one of the Kremlin’s objectives.

They managed to copycat Ukraine’s tactic of using FPV drones, which was first implemented to compensate for the lack of heavy artillery. 

Since then, anti-drone cages, first mocked by the Ukrainians, have become ubiquitous on both sides as the Russians’ electronic warfare quickly evolved—some makeshift cages the AMX-10 is also equipped with.

‘He only has a shotgun’

In this war, the main danger comes from the sky, and nothing beats a bird's view to assess the situation. 

Nastia offers us to visit a command center “nearby,” she says. After a few talks on the phone, the unit’s commander agrees, and we’re back on the road again under the heavy rain. 

A few slips on the way and an hour's drive later, we enter the base. Inside, order reigns. 

With its high-tech screens and the discipline that makes it look closer to a NASA monitoring room or a call center, the command center is a testament to Ukrainian soldiers’ and how much of a long way they came from the 2014 volunteer army that first took weapons against the Russians. 

Everybody’s young, from 21 to 30. They closely follow the Russians’ every move on the screens. 

The brigade recently had to relocate its command center to protect it from the relentless Russian advance. 

The commander, “Commissar,” a baby-faced soldier in khaki fatigue, is lucid in the situation. 

“The enemy is constantly assaulting Kurakhove from the right and the left flank,” he says. “I’d like to say the enemy isn’t that successful, but they do.” Then “Loki,” one of the other commanders in charge here, hands him a tablet. 

“They’re here, near this village,” Loki says.

Commissar jumps out of his seat: “Fuck, I’ll tell the brigade now.”

The conversation is cut short. A group of Russians is getting close to a Ukrainian position. The screen clearly shows them, and the resolution’s quality makes it feel like they’re in the room, too. 

The room is now buzzing with reports and orders. The hunt has started.

“This way? Damn, we see them there, damn it,” says Loki. “One, two, four, six, nine, fuck. Nine, fuck. Nine !”

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The drone gets closer. Getting the Russians before they get to the positions is all hands on deck. Seeing the Russians so close is almost unreal—and they’re obviously confident enough to bring small guns to a big fight.

“Fuck, he’s got just a shotgun,” says Loki.

Meanwhile, one of the operators tries to help other soldiers escape. The encrypted chats and walkie-talkies sizzle with orders.

“Dammit!  Ninja, Ninja, where are you? They're almost to the edge of your position. 

Ninja, Ninja, go to the other edge while they're not watching,” Commissar orders.

A flock of explosive drones is on the way to greet the invaders. As we leave, the fight's result remains uncertain, as the Russians on the screen keep evading the drones. One thing is for sure: Ukrainian soldiers’ willpower is intact.

The unit won’t give up until the drone lands its deadly charge on the Russian soldiers, saving their brothers-in-arms from death or worse.