Russian Tank Disappears in 'Catastrophic' Detonation: Ukraine Video

Russian forces are sustaining heavy losses even while they push forward at multiple points along the 600-mile front line in southern and eastern Ukraine, according to recent battlefield footage and casualty reports from Kyiv.

One video, filmed by Ukraine's 10th Army Corps and uploaded on the unit's Facebook page Tuesday, showed the apparent destruction of a Russian T-72B3 main battle tank amid intense fighting in the country's eastern Donetsk region.

The "morning hello," as the corps' post described the strike, was conducted using a first-person view (FPV) drone. The attack prompted "a catastrophic ammunition detonation," said the OSINTtechnical open-source intelligence tracking account on X (formerly Twitter).

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry also shared the footage on X, writing that the Russian tank was "instantly burned to ashes after being hit by an FPV drone."

Newsweek could not independently verify the footage, nor where it was filmed, and has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry for comment.

The OSINTtechnical account said the footage was filmed somewhere in Donetsk, which since 2014 has been a center of Russia's war against its neighbor. Since the beginning of Moscow's full-scale invasion in February 2022, the region has been the site of some of the most devastating battles.

The names of Donetsk settlements like Mariupol, Donetsk, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Vuhledar, Lyman and Marinka—among many others—have become synonymous with Moscow's devastating war. Fierce combat continues in the area as the war approaches its second anniversary, particularly around the hot spots of Avdiivka and Bakhmut.

The current exact location of the 10th Army Corps is unclear. However, the unit, headquartered in the central Ukrainian city of Poltava, is known to have taken part in Kyiv's failed summer counteroffensive in the country's southeast, fighting on battlefields in the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions.

Ahead of the operation, the 10th Army Corps consisted of some 20,000 to 30,000 troops, supported by 200 tanks and 700 infantry fighting vehicles and armored trucks, Forbes reported in May.

President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to the unit's command headquarters in August as its troops tried to push southward toward the occupied city of Melitopol. The president met with Serhiy Perets, the commander of the corps, during the battlefield visit.

Ukrainian forces have largely transitioned to an "active defense" stance following the failed summer operation. Lacking ammunition, grappling with sluggish or delayed Western support and with no indication of Kremlin fatigue, the forces are preparing to "grind" through the winter and early spring.

Russian units, meanwhile, are pushing for new territory despite the onset of winter. Moscow's forces are trying to isolate and capture the fortified Donetsk town of Avdiivka while continuing gradual advances around the destroyed city of Bakhmut.

Russian casualties are believed to be high. The British Defense Ministry said last month that continued high rates of attrition suggest "the degradation of Russia's forces and its transition to a lower quality, high quantity mass army since the 'partial mobilization' of reservists in September 2022."

On Wednesday, Kyiv said on X its forces have "eliminated" another 840 Russian personnel, bringing its reported total of Russian losses since February 2022 to 378,660.

Ukraine also reported 13 destroyed tanks, for an invasion total of 6,227; 31 armored combat vehicles, for a total of 11,579; and 61 artillery pieces, for a total of 9,008.

Neither Moscow nor Kyiv share details of their military losses. In December, U.S. intelligence officials estimated that Russia had suffered some 315,000 killed and wounded since February 2022, representing nearly 90 percent of its prewar force. Moscow had also lost around 2,200 of its prewar stock of 3,500 tanks.

A New York Times report in August cited U.S. officials who estimated the Ukrainian death toll at close to 70,000, with another 100,000 to 120,000 wounded.

For all its battlefield tenacity, "Russia put itself into fatal strategic disaster since February 2022," Pavel Luzin, a Russian political analyst and visiting scholar at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, told Newsweek in December.

The consequences will "weaken it for decades," he added.