russian army did try to slow him down from the air. but they managed to take down 6 helicopters and one airplane (flying command center). all the army/etc on his way was simply surrendering

Right. It would've been a different story if the Russian army treated them as enemy - their air forces could've stopped the convoy dead at any point of their choosing.

Highways let you move fast only as long as they're intact and no one is shooting at you; otherwise, they make you an easy target. Russian army experienced that first-hand in the first two months of their invasion of Ukraine.

>Right. It would've been a different story if the Russian army treated them as enemy - their air forces could've stopped the convoy dead at any point of their choosing.

my point was that they tried and they failed. wagner has a bunch of manpads and few pantsir sam systems. they tried to bomb them on highway from planes but missed and kill civilians in track. they also tried to shoot at them missles at voronezh but blew up some petrol refinary. they also tried to bomb some bridge to block road to moscow - but also missed

Is this confirmed? I stayed away from the news firehose this time, and only followed BBC live reporting, and IIRC there was no confirmation there of any bombing attempt, successful or otherwise.

there are videos of helis shooting refinery and planes bombing bridge (followed by video of somebody driving near the bridge and holes in highway or near it). about track on highway - there are videos of it burning with commentary that plane try to bomb wagner convoy but missed

> they also tried to shoot at them missles at voronezh but blew up some petrol refinary

No, I believe the oil refinery got blown up by a Wagner surface to air missile. The Wagners were trying to shoot down a federal Ka-52, the helicopter successfully deployed countermeasures, and the missile flew off target into the backstop - which happened to be a refinery.

There are two videos of the event from different angles circulating on telegram, it's pretty clear.

the reports were saying that wagners camped at refinery and helis tried to shoot at them. either way, helis definitely weren't there on behalf of santa claus with early presents delivery

Where on telegram?

If that was the video I saw yesterday.... wow. That pilot should be thanking every god from every belief. That missle just barely missed him.

I can only imagine in the US that if we could not use aircraft directly on the convoy, say they have very good air defense, we'd have dumped the bridges on the interstates in less than a day.

Yes, and I'm pretty sure Russia could do that too - if they were getting Blitzkrieged by some outside enemy force. Here, it was a theoretically friendly and small force, that suddenly turned around and drove towards Moscow. Given how much damage blowing up bridges and highways would do to the country, and somewhat unclear threat from the approaching mercenaries, I don't think anyone on the defense side considered dropping a bridge on the highway to be a reasonable move.

From what I've heard (personal hearsay, got no independent sources), some excavators were sent to ruin highways.

Edit: here's a link but this is not on the main highway. Unsure of the scale of this "operation" and if this was ordered from top brass or local initiative.

https://meduza.io/news/2023/06/24/v-lipetskoy-oblasti-gde-na...

they did bomb one of their own bridges (there is a video). and there were rumors that they plan to blow up few more

"I don't think anyone on the defense side considered dropping a bridge on the highway to be a reasonable move."

It surely was considered. I can imagine in the state of panic even tactical nukes were considered, but sure, not reasonable.

But if Wagner forces would have actually pushed through, then they definitely would have blown up bridges, if the alternative would have been Moscow under siege or house to house fighting.

To be clear though, there is no convoy on earth that the US Air Force can’t strike.

The Afghans would like a word with you.

Yeah if aliens for some reason wanted an invasion of the US homeland by zombie mindcontrolling the army of one other country (and had some way to negate nukes) their best chance wouldn't be China or the EU but Canada and Mexico, just because of the developed land transport infrastructure between the countries