In the footage, the Ukrainian soldier is seen approaching the tank from behind. As the armored vehicle moves down a dirt road, the paratrooper fires, causing an explosion. The Twitter account Ukraine Weapons Tracker posted the video on Friday morning. The nearly 1-minute clip currently has over 740,000 views as of early Friday night. “A Ukrainian paratrooper of the 95th Air Assault Brigade ambushed a Russian T-80BV tank at close range in the East. Destroyed,” Ukraine Weapons Tracker tweeted. As smoke billows from the tank, he attempts to fight back before another explosion is seen from within. The video then cuts to other shots of what appears to be the burning tank with more smoke coming from it. Newsweek was unable to independently verify the video and reached out to the Russian and Ukrainian defense ministries for comment. On Thursday, the UK Ministry of Defense said Russia was facing huge equipment losses amid the war in Ukraine. British officials said Thursday that since mid-October, Russian forces have been losing more than 40 armored vehicles a day. Moscow is relying on its ally, Belarus, to provide it with additional tanks and assault vehicles. In addition, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said last month that Russian forces are seeing “significant” manpower losses because they lack training in “basic” types of weapons. Above, an abandoned Russian T-62 tank is seen in southern Ukraine on October 7. A video on social media reportedly shows a Ukrainian paratrooper destroying a tank by shooting it alone and hitting it with an explosive weapon. Dimitar Dilkoff “According to preliminary information, a significant part of the weapons and military equipment sent by the occupiers in the directions of Donetsk and Novopavliv is limited or completely unsuitable for combat use,” the staff wrote in a Facebook update at the time. “Specifically, we are talking about T-62 tanks that were removed from long-term storage.” Russian military forces have reportedly left equipment behind in recent weeks as Ukraine’s military has been waging counter-attacks across the country, recapturing Russian-held territory. Ukraine’s National Guard said in late October that the tanks and equipment left behind by Moscow had more than doubled its firepower. “The newest example is the T-80 tank, the BMP-3 is also in full working order, [made in] 2021, even with the documentation – they left everything at our disposal,” National Guard fighter Yury Tarasov was quoted as saying, according to the press service of the National Guard of Ukraine. “It’s a good thing we have stupid neighbors who left the equipment in such a state.”
