WATCH the moment blundering Russian troops drive their £4 million tank straight into a ditch where it is easily picked off by Ukrainian drones.
The footage, released by the Ukrainian army, is shot through the cross hairs of airborne drones raining bullets on the enemy.
Somehow the driver failed to spot an enormous ditch and drove straight into it[/caption]
After becoming stuck, the tank was a sitting duck for the Ukrainians[/caption]
The tank was driving along by a lake trying to escape fire from Ukrainian drones[/caption]
It shows a Russian tank bumbling through the mud as Ukrainian bullets pound the vehicle and earth around it.
The war machine in the video is understood to be a T-90 – a late Soviet-era main battle tank which costs up to £4million per vehicle.
The hapless Russians then drive it straight into a huge ditch- where it inevitably gets stuck, nose down.
The huge vehicle becomes a sitting duck and smoke can be seen billowing out as the Ukrainians continue to pound it.
The embarrassing blunder comes as Ukraine pushes on with its surprise counter-offensive in the Kursk region of Russia.
The Ukrainians initially seized a chunk of Russian territory in August – also in a surprise offensive.
That marked the first time since the second world war that Russian territory had been invaded.
Since then the Russians have pushed back hard, but the Ukrainians had managed to hold onto 60 per cent of the land they won.
Zelenksy is eager to keep hold of the region because it could prove a valuable bargaining chip in any future negotiations.
Now, in a new brave push, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have attacked the Russians in several directions from the region.
Today President Zelensky said that Russian and North Korean troops had taken heavy losses.
“In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka, in the Kursk region, the Russian army lost up to a battalion of North Korean infantry soldiers and Russian paratroopers,” he said.
“This is significant,” he added.
In a statement on Telegram, Russia‘s defence ministry said: “At around 9am Moscow time, in order to stop the offensive by the Russian troops in the Kursk direction, the enemy launched a counter-attack by an assault detachment consisting of two tanks, one counter-obstacle vehicle, and 12 armoured fighting vehicles.”
Various Russian military bloggers provided more details about the attack, saying it was launched from the Ukrainians’ base at Sudza.
They said that the soldiers were advancing with armoured groups in the direction of the village Bolshoe Soldatskoe and the neighbouring Berdyn.
The ministry added that Russian forces hit back, destroying both tanks, the military engineering vehicle and seven armoured fighting vehicles.
Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said “there was good news from Kursk Region” and that Russia was “getting what it deserves”.
And Ukraine‘s counter-disinformation chief Andriy Kovalenko said in a Telegram post on Sunday: “The Russians in Kursk are experiencing great anxiety because they were attacked from several directions and it came as a surprise to them.”
US secretary of state Antony Blinken has said Ukraine’s occupation of Kursk is “important” for the country.
“Their position in Kursk is an important one because certainly it’s something that would factor in any negotiation that may come about in the coming year,” Mr Blinken told reporters in Seoul.
“Negotiations on Ukraine ceasefire should lead to a just and durable outcome,”
Russia has deployed North Korean troops in order to bolster its counter-offensive in Kursk, but they have suffered heavy losses.
After just two weeks of Koreans on the front line, Zelenksy said that 3,000 of them had been killed or wounded – almost a third of the estimated 11,000 who were shipped over.
That number is now likely to be higher.
South Korean intelligence reported last month that Kim Jong-Un was lining up more North Korean troops to send over to the frontline.
There have also been trains of weapons spotted rumbling across Russia, sent as a gift from the fellow communist leader.
In another blow to Vlad, a pair of his colonels were reportedly eliminated in a dramatic Storm Shadow missile blitz by Ukraine.
The deadly drone ambush over the weekend is said to have wiped out a Russian lieutenant and a battalion chief who were hiding out in a bunker in Kursk.
Lieutenant Colonel Valery Tereshchenko was targeted in the command post along with seven other senior officers.
Inside Putin’s ‘meat grinder’ war
VLADIMIR Putin will continue to hurl troops into his “meatgrinder” war in 2025 at such a rate that he won’t be able to arm them all, experts have said.
Putin will keep on luring soldiers to the frontline with propaganda and promises of cash in order to pry more land off Ukraine this year.
But the tyrant may pay for his arrogance – with experts predicting Russia will fall short “at some point in 2025” of enough military equipment to to supply its forces.
Some 3,500 Russian tanks and 7,500 armoured vehicles have already been taken out of action.
Russian soldiers were slaughtered at an ever-growing rate in 2024, with each of the last five months breaking the record for the highest losses yet.
On November 4, Russia lost 2,030 men – the first time during the war that figure exceeded 2,000 for a single day.
Luke Pollard, the UK’s under-secretary for defence, predicted Russian losses – soldiers killed, wounded or captured – would reach one million within six months.
And Nick Reynolds, a land warfare expert at RUSI, warned that Putin Putin’s conscience is untouched by the mass deaths.
Mr Reynolds told The Sun: “Putin is notorious, historically, for being not particularly moved by human suffering.”
The dictator has plenty of what British Defence Intelligence calls “tolerance for casualties”.
