A video published by a brigade with the Ukrainian Air Assault Forces on Friday purportedly shows the moment a Russian T-90M tank was destroyed in a drone strike after falling off a cliff in Ukraine. A drunk Russian tank driver drove the T-90M tank off the cliff and then hit by a Ukrainian drone.
“Another enemy tank – done,” the Ukrainian Army’s 80th Air Assault Brigade posted on its Telegram channel, sharing a nearly 1-minute clip of the drone strike.
The brigade is one of the Ukrainian Army’s oldest formations, and has been heavily involved in fighting against Russian forces in President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of the country. The military unit played a crucial role in recapturing territories around Kharkiv, in northeastern Ukraine, and is now focused on the Bakhmut area in the eastern Donetsk region.
Ukraine often releases drone footage showing the destruction of Russian military equipment and vehicles, including tanks. Newsweek has been unable to verify immediately the details of the video.
War Monitor, an account on X, formerly known as Twitter, tracks the war in Ukraine. It says that the tank was struck after driving off a cliff face south of Klishchiivka in the Donetsk region, near to the industrial city of Bakhmut. This has remained one of the fiercest fighting spots of the war.
The video shows the moment a Russian tank appears to fall backwards off a cliff before it is targeted in a drone strike, causing a fire and a column of smoke to rise into the sky.
The brigade praised the accuracy and dexterity of its drone crew, adding: “We continue to work! Together to victory!”
The Dutch open-source outlet, Oryx, says that, since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine started in February 2022, Russia has lost at least 6,207 tanks, of which 5,415 were destroyed, 125 were damaged, 119 were abandoned, and 548 were captured.
Meanwhile, figures published by Ukraine’s General Staff on Friday morning state that 12 Russian tanks were destroyed in the past 24 hours, bringing the total Russian tank losses since the war began to 5,415. Independent sources give numbers that are more conservative than Kyiv’s, and Russia does not publish figures on its military losses.
The video’s release comes some two months into Ukraine’s counteroffensive to recapture territory seized by Russia throughout the conflict. The Institute for the Study of War, a U.S.-based think tank, said on Thursday that Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations on at least three sectors of the front and advanced in the Donetsk-Zaporizhzhia Oblast border area on August 10.
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