A pair of Ukrainian tanks engaged a speeding Russian armored personnel carrier at point-blank range—just 50 feet or so—in a shocking skirmish in Russia’s Kursk Oblast apparently this week.
The outcome was never in doubt. The tanks from the Ukrainian army’s 17th Tank Brigade—either T-64s or T-72s—blasted the Russian APC twice, thoroughly wrecking it. “Closest tank engagement I’ve ever seen!” noted Mark Hertling, a retired U.S. Army general.
The bizarre fight began with the Russian vehicle speeding across a field toward the two Ukrainian tanks parked along a treeline somewhere in or near the roughly 300-square-mile Ukrainian-held salient in Kursk.
Why the crew of that lightly armed, thinly protected APC would drive straight toward a pair of tanks armed with 125-millimeter cannons and protected by hundreds of millimeters of steel is a mystery. It’s possible the Russians misidentified the Ukrainian tanks as Russian tanks. Russian and Ukrainian forces do use many of the same tank models, after all.
It’s also possible the Russians believed the tanks were immobilized and abandoned. Smoke curling from the engine compartment of the lead Ukrainian tank hinted that the vehicle had suffered some damage.
In any event, the APC took a direct hit from a 70-pound shell. Incredibly, several Russian soldiers spilled out of the ruined vehicle. “How did three Russian crewmen survive, much less walk away?” Hertling mused.
One Russian survivor sprinted right past the lead Ukrainian tank’s turret. Why the Ukrainian crew didn’t open fire with the tank’s coaxial machine gun, aligned with the bigger main gun, is another mystery. “Did [the] Ukrainian tank crew consider coax?” Hertling asked.
Two more Russian survivors cowered behind the APC’s smoking wreckage until a smaller projectile—possibly a drone or grenade—exploded nearby. They ran in the opposite direction as their comrade, away from the tanks.
And that was when the second Ukrainian tank fired a second 125-millimeter round, inflicting what Hertling characterized as needless additional damage on the already-destroyed Russian vehicle.
The skirmish was just one of many as Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk grinds into its 10th week and Russian forces counterattack along the western edge of the salient. Russian and Ukrainian troops find themselves mixing together in the chaos of the competing offensives.
The front is so fluid and unpredictable that, last week, Russian marines overran a Ukrainian drone team—forces who are normally behind the first line of troops—near the village of Zelenyi Shlyakh. The Russians stripped and executed the nine Ukrainians, provoking a bloody campaign of revenge by Ukrainian paratroopers.
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