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The Ukrainian army has released another video of how one of Vladimir Putin’s Russian tanks is destroyed by drones. Its weak point is obvious.
Pokrovsk – While Vladimir Putin sits far away in Moscow and travels through Russia to secure his brutal autocracy, many of his soldiers remain dead in Ukraine.
Losses for Russia in the Ukraine war: Vladimir Putin’s T-90 tanks go up in flames
The losses in the Ukraine war are said to be enormous, especially among Russian tank drivers, while Putin’s confidant Dmitri Medvedev has once again threatened the NATO state of Poland. The Ukrainian army has meanwhile shared the next video of how it shot down a Russian T-90 tank.
The footage comes from the eastern Donetsk region, from the front between Kramatorsk and Avdiivka, where the 47th mechanized brigade has long been holding its lines against superior Russian numbers of soldiers and equipment. The video is probably the last clear proof of how vulnerable the T-90 is, even though the vehicle is translated into Russian as “breakthrough” tank.
Losses for Vladimir Putin in the Ukraine war: Russia’s army cannot protect tanks from drones
The 47th Brigade itself shared the video according to Newsweek on Telegram. The soldiers are stationed near Pokrovsk and are securing their front in the extensive area between Novoselivka Persha and Ocheretyne primarily by using kamikaze drones against the Russian occupiers. Meanwhile, Putin’s Black Sea fleet in Crimea is being bombarded by Ukrainian ATACMS missiles.
The video described above once again impressively documented how defenseless the Russian tanks are against the FPV kamikaze drones of the Ukrainians. One drone hit the engine of the tank and brought it to a standstill. The next drone hit the lightly armored roof of the tank turret and damaged, according to Newsweek part of the steering system. “Several friendly units tried to set the tank on fire, but it didn’t work,” the 47th Brigade explained in its post.
T-90 main battle tank | |
Commissioning: | 1992 |
Crew: | 3 (commander, driver, gunner) |
Main armament: | 1 × 125 mm smoothbore gun |
Secondary armament: | 1 × 7.62 mm machine gun PKT, 1 × 12.7 mm anti-aircraft machine gun |
Weight: | 46.5 tons |
Speed: | 40–45 km/h (off-road), 60–65 km/h (road) |
Russia’s losses in Ukraine: RPG grenade becomes a problem for Putin
“We were tired of seeing this and one of our pilots decided to perform a masterpiece by hitting clearly between the turret and the hull of the tank,” the post from the Donbass front continued. This is the now well-known weak point of the Russian and Ukrainian battle tanks from former Soviet production. This is because: there, between the turret and the hull, the explosive ammunition is located in a loading carousel below the fighting compartment. Ergo, the grenades for firing at the respective enemy are placed directly below the gunner and the tank commander, which usually leads to the brutal death of the crew in the event of a direct hit in this area.
It is not uncommon for the tank’s turret to be blown down by these hits, as another video from the Ukraine war recently showed. For its targeted attacks, the Ukrainian army usually uses highly effective RPG anti-tank grenades that are mounted on the kamikaze drones and explode on the target using an impact fuse. According to recent estimates from Great Britain, Putin has now lost up to 3,000 battle tanks as a result of this Ukrainian tactic. As the open source intelligence website Oryx in a recent analysis wrote, by early February 2024, it was estimated that at least 108 T-90 tanks were among Putin’s losses.
Russia’s tank losses: Putin’s T-90 tanks have several weak points
Oryx documents military losses through photos and videos from the battlefield and maps. According to an analysis of the star One of the weak points of the composite armor is at the interface between the turret and the hull, and another is at the described interface between the turret and the hull. The digital viewing devices for the driver on the turret are also said to be vulnerable to hits from anti-tank guided missiles and drones: because they are simply not heavily armored, but are connected to the interior. The interior of the T-90’s armored hull, which is only eleven cubic meters in size, also contains highly flammable material.
Because: Videos of hit Russian T-90s repeatedly showed how they burned violently and burst into flames. Accordingly, an effective fire extinguishing system was probably not included in the design of the tank in the 1990s. Bitter for the Russian soldiers: The German Press Agency (dpa) recently reported Citing the general director of the arms manufacturer Rostec, Sergey Chemezov, Putin’s army will continue to be equipped with the slightly inferior but cheaper T-90 tanks. The reason: the successor model, the T-14 Armata, is too expensive with an estimated construction cost of four to five million US dollars per unit. (pm)
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