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Either it's a sign of waning resources or they are just more efficient?
If donkeys are more effecient then it is a sign of waning resources.
Golf karts, donkeys, dirt bikes and shed tanks are not some undiscovered secret hack to win wars quick. They're desperation moves.
Hmmm..... I think this might be a adaption to constant drone surveillance.
Supply vehicles are a major target for drones and artillery. They also leave tracks in the mud/snow that can easily be seen from the air. This gives the drone operators a fast way of locating where to search for enemy positions even if they miss the truck. The fresh tracks give them a region to search.
Now if they drop the supplies 5-10 miles from the positions and use donkeys to haul it to the final position using treelines etc the tracks will be very hard to follow. It would take a IR camera drone and a bit of luck to spot them.
I hope this is a sign of faltering Russian logistics, but I'm not certain.
If I'm trying to move heavy cartons across uneven, partially frozen, partially muddy ground I think a donkey/ mule is a very convenient* solution. Unlike an ATV you can get it right into the foxhole, and with a rope you don't need to be in the "red mist" zone of any exploding cartons.
*I say that, having never mucked out a stable or anything.
A donkey needs to eat. Grass is free in summer but limited. You need a lot of land to grow that grass. the donkey needs to eat even when you don't use it. Oil in modern cars are a lot cheaper for the amount of work you get. Acoup.org has a lot more details on how hard horse logistics are.
Or treat it as a delivery of ammo plus a delivery of meat.
That is an option, though troops on the front lines processing meat are sure to die as they are not moving and thus become an easy target.
Donkeys also are hard to produce - I don't know enough details of their breeding cycle that say much here, but the limits should be obvious.
Yeah, it might be a bad plan, but that doesn't rule it out as the plan.
Unless Putin is secretly up to something else and is ok throwing away hundreds of thousands of people plus all the military equipment they've lost, this whole thing looks like a bad plan.