Russian Troops Are Packing Homemade Mortars. Expect Accidental Explosions.

The smallest mortars in Russian service fire 82-millimeter bombs. This might reflect tradition. Where in many armies, the operators of the smallest infantry mortars indeed are infantry, in the Russian army all mortar crews belong to the artillery corps. That doesn’t mean the mortars don’t directly support small units—they do. The Russians’ 82-millimeter mortars usually take aim in the late stages of an infantry assault. “The final advance is covered by infantry mortars and then grenades are used before entering the target position,” Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds noted in a May report for the Royal United Services Institute in London.