- A regiment of Ukraine’s military shared a video of an assault it undertook on Russian forces.
- The video shows a tank firing on a trench in an unspecified region of Ukraine before Russian soldiers scatter.
- Fierce battles continue to be waged throughout Ukraine more than a year after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of the country.
A brigade of the Ukrainian Ground Forces on Tuesday shared a dramatic video of an assault it undertook on Russian forces.
The social media post was made by Ukraine’s 5th Assault Brigade of a skirmish that took place at an unspecified location inside Ukraine. Rob Lee, a former U.S. Marine infantry officer who is currently a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia Program, also tweeted out the video with additional details about the incident.
Warning: The video may be disturbing to viewers.
Fierce battles continue to be waged throughout Ukraine more than a year after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of the country in late February 2022.
On Saturday, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank assessed that Russia’s winter offense goals of seizing the Donetsk and Luhansk regions by the end of March had failed. However, Putin’s forces may be gaining an upper hand in Bakhmut as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged Wednesday his forces could pull out of the city if they are encircled.
Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty
“Video of an assault on a Russian trench by Ukraine’s 5th Assault Brigade,” Lee wrote in his Twitter caption for the tank attack video. “A Ukrainian tank fires at the trench at close range before soldiers clear the trench while an IFV [infantry fighting vehicle] suppresses the Russian soldiers.”
In the clip, a tank can be seen firing on a trench while advancing closer before Russian soldiers scatter from the attack.
Lee’s post used a video first posted on the official Facebook account of the 5th Assault Brigade, a regiment of the Ukrainian Ground Forces that was formed soon after the war with Russia began.
In its post, the 5th Assault Brigade indicated the fight shown in the video also involved Ukraine’s 24th Separate Assault Battalion, also known as the Aidar Battalion. The brigade’s Facebook video contains additional graphic footage that was seemingly left off of Lee’s Twitter post which appears to show dead bodies lying in the trench.
“Unbelievable footage of the combat work of the 5th Brigade and Aidar to destroy ‘rats,’ ‘reptiles’ and other unclean things that decided to parasitize our land,” the brigade’s caption read.
Newsweek reached out to the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs via email for comment.
Newsweek also contacted Rob Lee via the Foreign Policy Research Institute for comment.
