Thumpalumpacus
Major
Wouldn't a scouting party's job be to reconnoitre and report back rather than engage?
My stepdad Bob was Marine recon in Vietnam. His description of their mission was "snooping and pooping". They had three firefights in his thirteen months there, because their mission was LRRP, not probing or fighting. His expressed opinion was that if they got in a firefight they'd gotten off the rails.
If these Russians were doing deep-prowl, then yeah, they fucked up. If they were probing defenses, as Grau points out, firing is necessary. We'd have to know their orders in order to assess their success or failure.
It looks more to me like an encounter fight, judging from how the Ukrainians were also a little surprised at the Russian presence.
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