Even as Russia makes slow and steady gains in eastern Ukraine, Russian armored vehicles and tanks continue to be destroyed by Ukrainian troops using missiles and rockets supplied by NATO countries.
This week, photographs emerged of a Russian MT-LB armored vehicle on fire, destroyed by a Ukrainian missile strike.
“Somewhere in the East, Ukrainian indirect fire destroyed a Russian MT-LB armoured vehicle, which was apparently apparently [sic] already disabled. Seems that it had some improvised storage,” Ukrainian Weapons Tracker, a popular war-focused Twitter account revealed on Wednesday.
Video footage of the strike was also shared by researcher Arslon Xudosi. The video footage can be seen playing on a cell phone, mounted to the controller of an unmanned aerial vehicle. The cell phone is used as a screen, allowing infantrymen to see a birds-ey view of the strike.
No information about the kind of weapon used to destroy the MT-LB was made available.
The vehicle destroyed could be seen in photographs from before the strike.
It appeared to be disabled, with its reart doors open and supplies scattered on the floor behind it. It could be that soldiers were using the disabled vehicle as some kind of improvised storage system, allowing soldiers to hide the supplies and protect them against gunfire.
See the hit on the MT-LB here, destroying it. pic.twitter.com/R790nRC3bg
— Arslon Xudosi ?? (@Arslon_Xudosi) June 8, 2022
Additional Vehicles Destroyed In Donetsk, Ukraine
Similar footage shared by the National Guard of Ukraine last week also shows Russian vehicles traveling through a village in the Donetsk Oblast, before being hit by Ukrainian missiles. According to the Ukrainian National Guard, four BTR-82 Russian personnel carriers were destroyed, along with two MT-LB armored vehicles, a BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicle, and a T-72 battle tank.
In a statement, the Ukrainian military also confirmed that 20 Russian soldiers were captured in the village.
“Guards destroyed the enemy’s BMP and almost the entire platoon of occupiers in the Donetsk region. Seven more units of enemy military equipment were disabled,” the statement reads.
“Invaders who are constantly trying to take control of Ukrainian lands were forced to hide in the bushes, but it did not help them. This is not the first time the National Guard’s mortar battery was hiding with the occupier, and this time it ‘found’ about 20 Russian soldiers as well as 8 units of military equipment.”
What is the MT-LB?
Russia’s MT-LB is an amphibious multi-purpose tracked carrier that can be adapted to meet various needs. With a simple design, the MTLB can be deployed as an artillery tractor, a front-line load carrier, a mobile platform for many different kinds of weapons systems, or even a storage unit.
Sometimes armed with machine guns, the MT-LB is an ideal self-propelled howitzer for troops looking to transport supplies or infantrymen. The vehicle can carry 11 troops.
Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
