Crimea Video Shows Russian Tanks Brought in on Trains

Russian forces are allegedly transporting replacement tanks in Crimea by trains, new footage appears to show, ahead of the warmer spring and summer months that Ukraine has warned will likely herald fresh mechanized assaults from Moscow.

On Friday, pro-Ukrainian military partisan movement Atesh, which operates on the Crimean peninsula, wrote on Telegram that Russian forces were building up military vehicles in Crimea.

Russia has controlled Crimea for the past decade after it annexed the territory from Ukraine in 2014. Kyiv has vowed to reclaim Crimea, from which Russia has supported its operations against Ukraine on the mainland since it invaded in February 2022. Russia also partially bases its Black Sea Fleet in Crimea, which Ukraine has repeatedly, and often successfully, targeted.

An entire tank battalion, or 31 tanks, had been transferred to Yevpatoria, a western Crimean city north of the Black Sea port at Sevastopol, Atesh alleged in its statement.

Footage circulating online, including a brief clip published by a local Telegram channel in Crimea, appeared to show tanks ready for transportation.

Newsweek could not independently verify the footage and has reached out to the Russian defense ministry for comment via email.

It’s not clear whether the tanks allegedly moved to western Crimea would be used to bolster resources on the peninsula or would be deployed along the frontlines in mainland Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has targeted the Kerch Bridge, also known as the Crimean Bridge, linking the peninsula to mainland Russia to hamper the flow of resources to Moscow’s military. Vasyl Maliuk, the head of Ukraine’s SBU security service, said late last month that Russia was no longer using the bridge to replenish Moscow’s stocks of weapons and ammunition.

Russia has burned through its tank stocks after more than two years of all-out war in Ukraine. However, Moscow has mobilized its defense industry, with Western experts suggesting Russia will be able to maintain the flow of armored vehicles and tanks for the foreseeable future.

The reports from Atesh and the local Crimean Telegram channel come as Ukrainian sources and Western analysts suggest Moscow mounted a “battalion-sized mechanized assault” close to the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka on Saturday.

This looks to be Russia’s first armored attack of this size since Moscow launched its onslaught on Avdiivka in October 2023, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a U.S.-based think tank.

In the initial weeks of attacks on Avdiivka, which had been a Ukrainian stronghold, Russia lost many of its tanks and armored vehicles. During the height of the fighting, Kyiv shared footage appearing to show Russian military vehicles littering the fields around the city.

Russia then switched to infantry-led attacks to “conserve armored vehicles following the first two waves of assaults on the settlement,” the ISW evaluated in mid-December.

“The Russian military command’s willingness to commit a battalion’s worth of tanks to an attack near Avdiivka indicates that this assault was a priority effort,” the ISW wrote on Sunday.

Fighting around Tonenke over the weekend is a “positive indicator for Ukraine’s ability to defend against future large-scale Russian assaults and the expected summer 2024 Russian offensive operation,” the ISW added Sunday.

Ukrainian officials have warned that Russia is gearing up for a renewed offensive in the coming months. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Moscow will mount a new effort as early as May into the summer.