Ukraine has released now-viral footage that it says shows the dramatic moment when its drones successfully hit Russian tanks on the front line.
“The National Guard’s skilled drone operators first knocked down a Russian tank before destroying another that came for evacuation,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Friday, next to a two-minute undated video from an unspecified location.
Over the 23 months of the war, Russia has lost at 736 T-80 tanks and 2,666 tanks overall, according to the latest figures from the website Oryx, which tracks losses on both sides using open-source intelligence to verify the numbers. Ukraine’s estimate is much higher, standing at 6,271 as of Saturday. Newsweek has yet to verify these figures.
At the start of the unverified video, which Newsweek emailed the Russian Defense Ministry about on Saturday, is an illustrative color image of a T-80 tank, apparently not connected to the ensuing clip.
The footage begins with two tanks driving along a highway from the point of a view of drone, which appears to be tracking the vehicles. A missile is dropped onto the tank in front, and an explosion is seen.
“Hitting the driver’s seat, the vehicle loses control,” reads the caption in Ukrainian, according to a translation. The tank veers off to its right before hitting a natural barrier, possibly a bank, where it comes to a halt.
One soldier is seeing racing out of the left-hand side of the tank and running away before another explosive is dropped on the vehicle, which then becomes engulfed in flames. A caption appears, reading, “fire inside.”
Another frame shows missiles dropped on what seems to be the other tank shown at the start of a clip. There are three explosions before the video fades to black. As of Saturday, the footage had received more than 155,000 views.
John Moore/Getty Images
Ukraine’s military has previously boasted about the impact that U.S.-donated Bradley infantry fighting vehicles have had on Russian tanks, including their most-advanced vehicles, the T-90M.
Earlier this month, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry posted a clip on X of what looks like a Bradley firing on a Russian T-90M tank with a 25 mm chaingun. The footage was attributed by open-source intelligence accounts to Ukraine’s 47th Mechanized Brigade operating near Stepove, northwest of Avdiivka, in Donetsk region.
Ukrainian TV aired an interview with the two crew members of the tank in which one described how they fired “with all we could.”
Avdiivka has been the scene of an ongoing Russian offensive. The U.S.-based independent think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said on Friday that Moscow’s forces had made marginal advances near the town amid continued positional fighting.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.