Pro-Kremlin media have said Russia’s forces successfully struck the first M1 Abrams tank supplied to Ukraine’s armed forces by the U.S. but Newsweek has yet to verify this claim.
Following a pledge made earlier in 2023, the U.S. announced in September that 31 of the refurbished M1A1 tanks would arrive in Ukraine, amid hopes that 69-ton, four-person vehicles would deliver Kyiv a battlefield advantage.
However, five months on from their delivery, which mainly equipped the Ukrainian army’s 47th Mechanized Brigade, Russian news outlets have boasted that its country’s forces had finally destroyed one of the Abrams. In mid-February, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Ukraine’s military had lost more than 15,100 tanks and armored vehicles since the outbreak of full-scale war in February 2022.
The Telegram channel Mash posted a drone clip of a tank rolling along bombed-out streets, with the video cutting out before any attack takes place. Newsweek has contacted the Ukrainian Defense Ministry by email about the unverified footage.
A separate, low-quality video shows a burning vehicle, although it is not clear if it is an M1. Pro-Kremlin media said that images that appear to be a damaged M1 on fire were evidence that Russian forces had destroyed the tank in the Avdiivka direction in the Donetsk oblast. Newsweek has not yet verified the footage. Moscow’s troops are making gains around the area after capturing the town on February 17.
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“Before this, the movement of the tank was noticed in Berdychi. after which the Russian military from the 15th separate motorized rifle brigade conducted their operation efficiently,” the Mash post said.
Other pro-Kremlin media outlets reported the alleged strike, such as Moskovsky Komsomolets, which said Russia’s 15th brigade “hit the tank with a kamikaze drone and finished it off with a grenade launcher.”
Russian military correspondent Alexander Kots wrote on Telegram next to the video, “an Abrams is on fire, it burns well.”
Vladimir Saldo, governor of the occupied Kherson region, said on Telegram that the tank was detected by a reconnaissance drone before being destroyed and that it “burns even brighter than the Leopards,” referring to the German-supplied tanks.
Russian military expert, Sergei Suvorov, a retired colonel, told the Tass state news agency that Russian troops had been waiting for a long time to make such a hit and that other Western-supplied equipment would face a similar fate.
Meanwhile, military blogger Rudenko V said that the timing of the alleged strike was significant, given that Western leaders were meeting in Paris on Monday to discuss supplying new weapons and ammunition for Kyiv.
“A video of NATO’s most advanced weapons burning out in the Donbas steppes should set a special mood for these talks,” Rudenko V added.
Following those talks, France and the Netherlands backed the Czech Republic’s plan to procure hundreds of thousands of ammunition rounds for Kyiv from outside the EU as Ukraine faces a shortage of supplies to fight Russia.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.