Daring Mission to Clear an AFU Tank From Plugging a Small Gap in the Defense Line East of Khurakhove

October 2024

The feat of tank crews of the Fifth Brigade of the 51st Army, accomplished today. While observing their actions, we got rare footage, in fact, a small military action movie.

The gist: armored groups of the Fifth Brigade are rushing into Kurakhovo. The city is heavily fortified. The Ukrainian Armed Forces have shielded themselves with the "Surovikin Line". They dug an anti-tank ditch along the entire line of defense, reinforced it with concrete tetrahedrons ("dragon's teeth"), and entangled all the MZP (low-visibility obstacles) - a tangle of steel wire in which even a tank can get entangled.

The Fifth Brigade carved a passage in this line of defense, concentrating tank and artillery fire in one place. Ukrainian commanders realized that a breakthrough of Russian armor was about to follow through this gap, and they made an unconventional decision, despite the hits from our artillery - they plugged the gap with a Ukrainian tank. This can be seen in the objective control footage.

The Ukrainian crew, two tankmen, jumped out and tried to save themselves in the ruins of Kurakhovo. In the black and white footage (this is daytime, but filmed in thermal imaging mode), you can see how the Fifth Brigade's drone operators are destroying the Ukrainian tankmen. At the same time, two motorcyclists of the Fifth Brigade pick up two of our tankmen and rush to the abandoned tank.

Sitting down, getting tangled in the scattered MZP, the tankmen run to the defense line, jump into the Ukrainian tank, start it up and drive it toward the residential sector. The Ukrainian artillerymen hit the tank several times, and it gets stuck in the ruins of Kurakhovo. The passage was again cleared for our attacks.