Russia Sends Pacific Island ‘Machine Gun Artillery Division’ To Ukraine

During an ostensible operational pause in the first half of July, Russian forces repeatedly attempted to capture the city of Siversk, thirteen miles east of recently occupied Lyschansk. Though Siversk only had a pre-war population of 11,000, its capture would open a gateway for Russian forces to advance on the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, as well as a new southward road from which these could assail Bakhamut—all key objectives.

But though Russian officials claimed the capture of Siversk on July 13, photos proved it remained under Ukrainian control the following day. Then on July 15, Ukrainian defenders repelled a concerted Russian attack involving DPR separatists, Wagner mercenaries and Russian regular forces, supported by attack helicopters and fighter bombers on July 15. The small city remains a locus of Russian attacks into the third week of July.

A video posted in the aftermath of the failed July 15 attack, showed troops from Ukraine’s 81^st Air Assault Brigade and the National Guard’s Omega special forces detachment recovering a unit patch from several dead Russian soldier.

The patch, sporting the crossed barrels of a World War I vintage Maxim machine gun and old-fashioned cannons, had a curious story to tell: it was the emblem of the 18^th Machine Gun and Artillery Division (MGAD), the only units of its kind in the Russian military and a seeming throwback to the World Wars.

The 18^th MGAD’s unique organization reflects its (usually) specialized role: the defense of the Kurile islands, which Russia seized from Japan using amphibious landing ships secretly supplied by the United States in the closing days of World War II.

As Tokyo never relinquished its claim to the islands, and Russia’s military had firsthand experience in how the islands could be captured by amphibious assault, in the 1970s Moscow saw fit to fortify the archipelago, including situating dozens of outdated tanks in fixed concrete firing positions.

Thus the 18^th MGAD was equipped for a purely static, defensive role with heavy weapons in fixed positions overlooking potential beaches for an amphibious attack, and just enough personnel to man them. With just 3,500 troops, the unit has roughly one-third or one-fourth the total personnel of an ordinary division.

While the 18th no longer really specializes in machine guns, it does have substantial artillery assets, as well as supporting tanks and some mobile infantry in lightly armed and armored MT-LB tracked APCs (usually reserved for lower-priority Russian forces.)

The presence of 18^th MGAD troops in Ukraine was first reported on July 4 in a daily briefing by Ukrainian presidential advisor Aleksei Arestovych. Military historian Tom Cooper estimates one or two battalion tactical groups (BTGs) from the 18^th MGAD were active in the July fighting so far. This lean division could likely only generate around 4 BTGs from its personnel.

Thus Russia may have stripped away a substantial portion of its Pacific island garrisons 4,700 miles to the west to serve as assault troops in Ukraine—a role those soldiers weren’t equipped to perform.

But Russia is scrambling to fill in a desperate shortage of infantry so as to exploit any operational momentum in Eastern Ukraine. For now, it remains unclear which subunits of the 18^th were sent, and what heavy equipment these personnel brought with them (if any) or were furnished with upon arrival in the European warzone.

The Machine Gun “Division”

Today, modern militaries near universally disperse machine guns and similar heavy weapons into small infantry units.

But during World I and II armies like those of Soviet Union, UK and Germany also maintained entire ‘machine gun battalions’ with 20 to 40 heavy, crew-served machineguns. While such units couldn’t assault enemy positions like an infantry unit, they could project formidable defensive firepower, as well as provide covering fire to support an attack. In practice, rather than deploying together on the battlefield, these battalions were usually split into separate companies to reinforce field units, or assigned to man fortified areas where lack of mobility was no problem.

During World War II, the 18^th Machine Gun and Artillery Division fought in the famously hellish battle of Stalingrad, and later participated in the Red Army’s Manchurian offensive. It was later re-founded in 1978 with its current role as Russia’s first line of island defenses in the Pacific, with the bulk of the division on Iturup Island. The division’s frontline battalions used World War II-vintage IS-2 and IS-3 heavy tanks firing from fixed positions as well as 1950s-era T-54 tank turrets encased in concrete, as described in an article by Linnik Sergey.

By the 2010s, Russian analysts conceded the 18^th was unlikely to hold out more than a few days if attacked by Japan or the United State. But Moscow at this time undertook a major modernization of the defenses. The 18^th division’s ancient T-55s were replaced with T-72Bs, which have since begun being replaced with more modern T-80BVs or T-80BVMs. Even more importantly, new Kh-35 Bal and K-300 Bastion-P anti-ship missile batteries and S-300V4 surface-to-air missile systems under the 68^th Corps gave the island garrisons a long-distance bite.

Currently, the 18^th MGAD (or PulAD in Russian) disposes of two Machine-Gun Artillery Regiments, as well as supporting units, all usually subordinated to the 68^th Army Corps.

• 46^th Machine Gun Artillery Regiment (Kunashir island)
• 49^th Machine Gun Artillery Regiment (Iturup island)
• One each of following support companies: UAVs (Orlan-10), Communications

A document posted here, apparently circa 2017, appears to spell out the structure of its regiments, which the author has slightly modified below based on additional sources and recent developments.

Each Machine Gun Artillery Regiment includes:

• 2x Machine Gun and Artillery battalions
• 1x Motor-Rifle battalion (infantry mounted on MT-LB tracked APCs, many upgraded with 12.7mm heavy machine guns)
• 1x artillery battalion (18x towed 2A36 and/or self-propelled 2S5 152-millimeter long-range artillery system)
• 1x tank company or battalion (9 or 31 tanks) with T-72B or T-80BV tanks
• anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) battery
• 1x rocket artillery battery (6x Grad 122-millimeter systems)
• Very short-range air defense battalion (one company with 27x Igla man-portable air defense missiles, one battery with six Strela-10 [SA-13 Gopher] mobile air-defense missiles, and one battery of six ZSU-23-4 ‘Shilka’ cannon-armed air defense vehicles)
• Air-defense battalion (8x Tor-M2U [SA-15] vehicles)
• One each of following support companies: Engineer & Sappers, electronic warfare, communications, logistics, repair

Fortunately for Moscow, there is realistically no chance Japan will launch some kind of surprise invasion of the Kurile/Sakhalin islands. But the redistribution of lean garrison forces in East Asia for use as assault troops in Ukraine highlights how Russia is forced to strip its defenses of politically sensitive areas (including the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad and in Armenia) so as to feed Putin’s voracious war.