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Newly obtained video footage shows a Russian tank falling prey to a Ukrainian First Person View (FPV) drone, at a time when Vladimir Putin's tank reserves seem to be dwindling.
Knewz.com has learned that the attack took place in the Pokrovskyi sector of Ukraine, near Donetsk.
The FPV drone responsible for the attack belonged to the "Mosquitoes" strike group, part of the "Brodyaga" reconnaissance-strike unit of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Video footage captured by the drone as it decimated the Russian tank has been obtained by the news outlet Kyiv Post.
The footage showed the FPV drone slamming into the tank, while another drone captured the moment of impact and the tank going up in flames.
The commander of the crew that destroyed the Russian tank is a soldier with the call sign "Sil," meaning Salt. He elaborated on the circumstances of the latest attack in a statement via Kyiv Post:
"The occupiers conducted another assault with the support of tanks and other armored vehicles... The Russian tank tried to fire at the positions of the Ukrainian military but was destroyed with the help of an FPV drone."
The outlet reported that the drone used in the attack cost around $372-$496, whereas the T-72 tanks cost somewhere between half a million dollars (old models) and $3-4 million (newer models, based on the configuration).
This shows Ukraine's continuing trend of using low-cost equipment to cause heavy damage to expensive Russian war machines.
Dmytro Lysenko, a drone pilot with the 109th Separate Territorial Defense Brigade of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, said in a statement to Kyiv Post that while Russia fires artillery shells and other munitions at them, the drones at Ukraine's disposal are a force to be reckoned with.
"A shell can fly and miss, and that’s it. But a drone pilot aims and will be very accurate when they drop an explosive," Lysenko told the outlet.
Ukraine has been using FPV drones to take down Russian troops as well, as Special Ops reported that they took out over a dozen Russian soldiers in a previous mission using the same.
"The [Ukrainian Special Forces] also managed to destroy various pieces of military equipment, including armored personnel carriers, tanks, anti-aircraft missile gun complexes, self-propelled artillery pieces, howitzers, mortar positions, and even TOS-1A 220mm “Solntsepyok” MLRS fitted with thermobaric warheads," Kyiv Post wrote.
On the other hand, analysis of satellite images has shown that Russia's tank reserve has been depleting at a significant rate, raising questions about how long Putin will be able to keep up the Ukraine war.
The German news outlet Süddeutsche Zeitung used an artificial intelligence model to analyze satellite images of 87 Russian military sites, including 16 military bases that mainly store tanks, artillery vehicles, and armored personnel carriers.
The outlet used the artificial intelligence model to count the number of tanks present at these sites before the commencement of the Ukraine war and compared it to the number of tanks present now.
"For example in one of the largest Russian tank reserve warehouses, the 111th Central Armored Reserve base of the army in southeastern Russia, hundreds of armored vehicles have disappeared since the beginning of the war," Süddeutsche Zeitung noted.
The outlet reported that the 60-hectare base contained 857 tanks in April 2021, whereas satellite images from October 2022, eight months after the start of the war, only showed 431 tanks.
"And today, 2024... the Base [is] almost empty," the outlet wrote.
Gustav Gressel, a Russia and military expert at the international think tank European Council on Foreign Relations, told the outlet that he believes the rapid depletion of tank reserves will become a problem for Russia "in about two years."
