Wagner Destroys Ukrainian Vehicles In Donetsk Oblast – Video footage shared on social media this week shows Ukrainian infantry fighting vehicles being targeted by Wagner troops. The video, shot from the perspective of a missile system operator, shows the Ukrainian vehicles on a road surrounded by trees.
At the beginning of the clip, Wagner troops are heard shouting, and as some Ukrainian vehicles speed away in the distance, two infantry fighting vehicles appear to be left stuck in the road.
The missile system operator strikes one of the vehicles and is heard celebrating following the strike.
Ukraine Weapons Tracker, a popular war-tracking Twitter account, suggested that the vehicles looked to be a Ukrainian BMP-2 and an M80A infantry fighting vehicle.
The incident reportedly took place close to Zaliznyanske in Donetsk Oblast, roughly 15km to the northwest of the embattled city of Bakhmut.
“A Ukrainian BMP-2 and what appears to be a M80A infantry fighting vehicle were destroyed by the Russian Wagner PMC near Zaliznyanske, #Donetsk Oblast,” Ukraine Weapons Tracker writes.
Knowledgeable Twitter users also noted that the footage appears to show a strike that occurred on March 24th, four days before it was uploaded to Twitter by Ukraine Weapons Tracker.
In an exchange, Ukraine Weapons Tracker suggests that the footage shows vehicles being taken out by a Tor-M2 Russian missile system.
The Tor-M2, an upgraded version of Russia’s Tor-M1, is a short-range missile system designed to be used for air defense. The missile system was first shown to the public at the Moscow Air Show in 2007 and has seen several variants manufactured since.
These include the Tor-MTA that features a surveillance radar, the Tor-M2E for export, the Tor-M2K that comes with a wheeled 9A331MK chassis, and the Tor-M2KM, which features a modular design designed to work with different kinds of chassis.
Wagner Soldiers Are Being Slaughtered In Bakhmut
Bakhmut, a city not seen as strategically important to the Russians, has seen some of the most intense fighting in the whole of Ukraine over the last several months.
Much of the burden has been placed on Wagner’s private soldiers, and according to a Washington-based think tank, it might be on purpose.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said this week that Putin might be using the fight in Bakhmut to “largely destroy” the Wagner Group after some very public feuds between the Kremlin and the private mercenary group’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin.
#Ukraine: A Ukrainian BMP-2 and what appears to be a M80A infantry fighting vehicle were destroyed by the Russian Wagner PMC near Zaliznyanske, #Donetsk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/gy4daRYuJm
— ???????? Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) March 28, 2023
“We currently assess, due to the infighting between the Russian ministry of defence and Wagner Group’s Yevgeny Prigozhin, that the Russians are using Bakhmut to largely destroy the Wagner Group and, so to say, put Prigozhin in his place,” analyst George Barros from the ISW said.
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Jack Buckby is 19FortyFive’s Breaking News Editor. He 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.
