Ukrainian Leopard tank takes out entire column of Russian armor

This is the moment a lone German-made Leopard tank took on an entire column of Russian armor. Footage shows the tank blasting three armored trucks and two tanks driving down a road in eastern Ukraine, near the city of Kurakhove. The vehicles caught on fire after heavy gunfire rained down on them, with smoke billowing into the sky while Russian soldiers attempted to flee to safety.

The fleeing soldiers were killed shortly after, according to the Ukrainian army unit who posted the footage on Telegram. ‘One for a whole column,’ the unit captioned the video. This comes as Putin’s troops suffered ‘unimaginable losses’ during their meat grinder counter-offensive in the Kursk region, according to X account WarMonitor. On Monday, Russia suffered its deadliest day of the war in Ukraine so far, with 1,950 soldiers killed in just 24 hours, the Ukrainian army said.

The record number of troops dying within a day serves as fresh humiliation for Putin after his two-day Kursk counter offensive last weekend ended with 28 tanks blown up and 100 troops killed, according to reports. Footage shows Russian armored vehicles, each of them carrying about 30 troops, driving over landmines in Kursk before exploding, with some injured soldiers crawling out of the wreckages as the smoke dissipated.

Russia lost more than 710,000 troops since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion almost three years ago, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said this week. Despite the heavy losses, Moscow is pushing forward with its ‘meat assaults’ and continues to advance at its fastest rate since 2022, with Ukraine’s armed forces chief admitting this month that it is currently facing ‘one of the most powerful’ Russian offensives since the war broke out.

Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region has stalled, and Moscow has reportedly massed a force of 50,000 soldiers as it aims to reclaim the territory taken from it three months ago. Kyiv said last week its forces had clashed with some of the estimated 11,000 North Korean soldiers sent to the region to support Moscow, with some experts saying their deployment could be partly due to the heavy Russian losses. Volodymyr Zelensky said at the time of the August incursion into Kursk that the taking of Russian territory could serve as a bargaining chip with Moscow.

But, stretched by manpower shortages, Ukrainian forces have lost some of the ground they captured in August incursion, and have continued to lose large swathes of its own territory. The record number of daily Russian losses on Sunday (1,770 troops) and Monday (1,950 troops), which surpasses the previous peak of 1,730 in a day back in May, is broadly in line with estimates from Western countries. The number of Russian soldiers killed and injured averaged 1,500 ‘every single day’, UK Chief of the Defence Staff Sir Tony Radakin told the BBC on Sunday.

Russia is making huge sacrifices in order to secure ‘tiny increments of land,’ Radakin said, but added that it continues to make ‘tactical, territorial gains,’ and is ‘putting pressure on Ukraine’. Sir Tony said that the Russian people were paying an ‘extraordinary price’ for Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘s invasion, saying that October was the worst month for losses since the conflict began in February 2022. ‘ Russia is about to suffer 700,000 people killed or wounded – the enormous pain and suffering that the Russian nation is having to bear because of Putin’s ambition,’ he told the Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg program.

The cost of the war, which he put at more than 40 percent of public expenditure on defense and security, is also ‘an enormous drain’ on Russia. The past weekend saw the largest drone attacks by Russia and Ukraine since the war began, with the barrages impacting large swathes of each country and hundreds of drones downed, including in the Moscow region.

Strikes have intensified amid expectations that US President-elect Donald Trump will put pressure on both sides to end the conflict. Trump repeatedly said throughout his campaign that he could end the war ‘in a day,’  without saying how.

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