- The M1 Abrams tank was built to fight the Soviets, and it appears to be at war on Russian soil.
- Ukraine shared a video this week of an Abrams in combat alongside a Bradley fighting vehicle.
- The footage was geolocated to Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine launched a surprise invasion in August.
The American-made M1 Abrams was built during the Cold War to fight the Soviets, and after several decades of service and combat, this tank appears to be at war on Russian soil.
The Ukrainian military’s 47th Mechanized Brigade shared video footage this week showing an Abrams tank in combat operations with an M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, calling the US-provided armor duo a “terror for the invaders.”
“American equipment decides on the battlefield. In this case, it’s personnel rotation, fire support, and destruction of enemy infantry stuck in houses,” Ukraine’s 47th wrote in a Monday post on the Telegram messaging app, praising the skills of its soldiers.
The 47th did not say when the footage was taken or disclose where the fighting occurred. However, several open-source intelligence accounts and Ukrainian media geolocated it to Novoivanovka, a small village in Russia’s Kursk region.
Ukrainian forces launched a surprise invasion of Kursk in early August, the biggest attack on Russian soil by a foreign enemy since World War II. The region has been the site of intense fighting in the months since, with Moscow having reclaimed some of its initial losses in the early weeks of the daring assault.
While other Western armored combat vehicles have already been deployed to Kursk, the video published by the 47th on Monday appears to be the first known instance of Abrams tanks operating there.
A Russian commander previously said that an Abrams was destroyed in Kursk, according to Kremlin-run state media, but the claim remains unconfirmed.
George Barros, the geospatial-intelligence team lead and a Russia analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, told Business Insider that “this is definitely the first time” the Abrams tank has been observed operating in Kursk. ISW analysts reviewed the OSINT geolocation and said it looked solid.
The Pentagon referred BI “to the Ukrainians to comment on their operations” when asked about the apparent Abrams tank activity inside Russia.
The Abrams is a third-generation main battle tank that was designed and built with the Soviets in mind. Robert Greenway, a former US Army Abrams operator and defense expert at the Heritage Foundation, previously told BI that the tank “was made for central European plains against Soviets,” adding that it was “built to kill tanks.”
The Abrams has been in service since the 1980s and has logged extensive combat experience in the decades since.
The US sent 31 M1A1 variants to Ukraine last fall, and earlier this month, Australia said it would send nearly 50 of its own in a move that would more than double Kyiv’s existing inventory.
Abrams tanks are highly advanced and heavily armored, but Ukraine received older export models without some of the latest upgrades, like the newest armor. It has taken extra precautions and outfitted them with added layers of protection to help defend against inbound munitions like rockets, missiles, and exploding drones.
Both the Abrams and the Bradley can be seen outfitted with some additional armor in the recent footage said to be from Kursk.
However, despite the added protection, the Abrams is still vulnerable to the same threats that have challenged other armored vehicles on the battlefield. Some open-source estimates suggest Ukraine has lost up to 16 tanks, but this has not been confirmed.
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