Photos and videos of the damaged US-made equipment have surfaced online and have been shared by Russian journalists
The Russian forces have allegedly knocked out another one of the US-made Abrams tanks supplied to Ukraine by Washington, the Russian media reported on Sunday, pointing to the images that surfaced online. Moscow’s troops also reportedly destroyed a tracked mine-clearing vehicle based on the Abrams chassis.
Photos of a destroyed tank first appeared in the Telegram channel of a Russian journalist and a talk show host, Vladimir Solovyev. The heavy armor was hit near the village of Berdychi, not far from the Donbass city of Avdeevka, which was recently seized by the Russian troops, he said in a comment to the image.
The Russian soldiers first stopped the tank by firing a grenade launcher at its chassis, Solovyev said, adding that the heavy equipment was eventually destroyed by a storm squad. The journalist did not reveal his information sources.
A video demonstrating damaged US-made equipment was also published by a Russian military correspondent, Yury Kotenok, on Sunday. A minute-and-a-half-long clip showed what the journalist described as an M1150 Assault Breacher Vehicle (ABV). It is a specialized US-made mine- and explosives-clearing vehicle based on the M1 Abrams chassis. It is unclear how many such vehicles had been handed over to Kiev.
Footage shows the tracked armored vehicle standing in the middle of a dirt road while being engulfed in plumes of thick grey smoke. Tongues of flame appear to be licking out of one of its sides. According to Kotenok, the ABV was also destroyed somewhere near Avdeevka.