This video footage purports to show a Russian armored personnel carrier emerging from a tree line and traveling across a pockmarked field before it is hit in a Ukrainian artillery strike and left smoldering.
Zenger News obtained the video from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) on June 15.
The AFU General Staff said: “Soldiers of the 95th Air Assault Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine destroyed a Russian MT-LB armored personnel carrier that was trying to ‘escape’.”
The 95th Air Assault Brigade is a unit of Ukrainian Air Assault Forces, Ukraine’s rapid reaction force. It is located in Zhytomyr in northwest-central Ukraine. The brigade did not specify where in Ukraine the strike took place.
The MT-LB is a Soviet multi-purpose fully amphibious auxiliary armored tracked vehicle that entered service in the late 1950s. The Ukrainian military is also among its current operators.
We contacted Russian and Ukrainian officials for comment but had not received a reply at the time of writing.
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 in what the Kremlin is calling a “special military operation” to “liberate the Donbas.” June 16 marks the 113th day of the invasion.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported that between February 24 and June 16, Russia had lost about 32,950 personnel, 1,449 tanks, 3,545 armored fighting vehicles, 729 artillery pieces, 233 multiple launch rocket systems, 97 air defense systems, 213 warplanes, 179 helicopters, 591 tactical drones, 129 cruise missiles, 13 warships, 2,494 motor vehicles and fuel tankers, and 55 pieces of special equipment.
In related news, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi are en route to Kyiv for talks in the Ukrainian capital. They are hoping to rebut what has been perceived as their lukewarm support for Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Washington has told China it risks ending up on the “wrong side of history” following Chinese President Xi Jinping’s assurance to Russian President Vladimir Putin that Beijing supports Russian “sovereignty.”
Thousands of civilians remain trapped in the key eastern Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk, where the water supply is reported to be dwindling. Hundreds of civilians are taking shelter in the bunkers beneath the city’s Azot chemical plant.
Luhansk Oblast governor Serhiy Haidai said earlier this week that all three bridges into Sievierodonetsk had been destroyed, making delivering supplies and evacuating civilians impossible.
United States President Joe Biden has promised Kyiv another one billion dollars in security assistance and weapons. And the Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, says Russia has lost around 20 to 30 percent of its armored forces during the ongoing invasion.
