Social media shows time and time again Russian weapons being destroyed by Ukraine’s forces.
When will the war end?
We know one thing – until it does, we will be able to watch it almost in real-time on social media:
Russian Tank Destroyed In Close-Proximity Strike in Ukraine – Yet another video has emerged online showing a Russian tank left completely destroyed by a Ukrainian strike – and it’s one of the closest proximity strikes we’ve seen yet during the Ukraine War .
The video shows two Russian tanks, seemingly abandoned on the battlefield, being targeted by a Ukrainian drone and grenades.
What We Know
Back in Februrary, According to a post by Ukraine Weapons Tracker, a popular war-tracking Twitter account, the two tanks were positioned in such a way that one tank could tow the other off the battlefield and back to a Russian position where it could be repaired.
Russian soldiers were unable to successfully recover the tank, however.
At the beginning of the video, several Russian soldiers can be seen fleeing the vehicles the moment they see the Ukrainian drone.
The fact that the men were forced to abandon the vehicles meant that they not only lost the tank they were trying to recover, but the functional vehicle that also endured damage as a result of the strike.
Viewers see several attempts at dropping a munition into the open hatch on top of the T-80BV tank in the video, which was recorded by the same Ukrainian drone used to drop the munition into the tank.
After a couple of tries, the munition eventually lands perfectly inside of the vehicle and starts a fire that eventually engulfs and destroys it.
“A Russian T-80BV tank was destroyed by the Ukrainian 72nd Brigade using drone-dropped munitions in #Donetsk Oblast,” Ukraine Weapons Tracker writes in the post.
“A T-80BVM that was taking part in the attempted recovery of the T-80BV received minor damage.”
Russia Is Still Using 60-Year-Old Tanks in Ukraine
Around the same time, a photograph emerged on social media showing a Russian T-62 tank located somewhere in eastern Ukraine. The photograph is said to have been taken in late 2022.
It is just one of many aging T-62s deployed by the Russians in Ukraine, many of which have either been destroyed or captured by the Ukrainians, but it is a rare example of one of these tanks discovered completely intact.
As David Axe noted in Forbes, at least 65 T-62s have been captured by the Ukrainian so far, and many of those captured have been converted into engineering vehicles.
Axe also noted how, despite several upgrades including improved armor, T-62s remain one of the easiest Russian military vehicles to destroy on the battlefield.
“This “new” T-62 can see a bit farther than an “old” T-62 and also resist high-explosive shells a bit better.
But it’s still a T-62.
And it’s still mostly just target practice for Ukrainian troops,” Axe writes.
With a shortage of modern tanks and older tanks proving ineffective on the battlefield, it’s no wonder Russian troops are risking everything to capture and repair broken tanks on the battlefield.
#Ukraine: A Russian T-80BV tank was destroyed by the Ukrainian 72nd Brigade using drone-dropped munitions in #Donetsk Oblast.
A T-80BVM that was taking part in the attempted recovery of the T-80BV received minor damage. pic.twitter.com/d15IPSAqeT
— ???????? Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) February 27, 2023
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.
