Russia claims it has destroyed British Challenger 2 tank inside border

Russia claims to have destroyed a British Challenger 2 tank operating inside its borders as military bloggers trumpeted the efforts of Moscow ‘s troops to repel Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk. Footage shared by the Troika milblogging Telegram channel showed how an FPV drone swooped down on the British armour seen protruding from some bushes. There was no immediate proof of an explosion but the Challenger 2 – operated by the Ukrainian armed forces inside the Russian region of Kursk – was destroyed by Russia’s 155th Brigade marines underneath the turret in ‘its main weak spot’, according to Russian reports.

‘The very fact that it was transferred by the Ukrainian Armed Forces as a reserve to Kursk Oblast indicates the enemy’s intention to hold the occupied lines in our region at all costs,’ said a from Two Majors Telegram channel, reposted by Rybar military channel. ‘The enemy is throwing fresh reserves, NATO armoured vehicles into battle and is putting up fierce resistance,’ the military blogging channel concluded. Russia claims to have destroyed at least one other Challenger 2 tank, supplied to Ukraine by the UK.

The doomed Challenger 2 tank is believed to have been operated by the 82nd Airborne Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian Army. Its destruction in Kursk comes as Russia amasses some 50,000 troops in preparation for a major operation to repel Ukrainian forces from the Kursk region, a presence seen as humiliating to Vladimir Putin. The force likely includes some 10,000 North Korean troops recruited by Putin. Kyiv’s troops remain in control of hundreds of square miles of Kursk region close to the Ukrainian border.

Elsewhere, Russian forces are said to have reached the outskirts of the Ukrainian city of Kupiansk, but each side disputed the claims of the other regarding the battles unfolding there. Russian milbloggers claimed armoured units had moved into the northeastern city and began seizing territory. ‘At night, enemy resources reported from the Kupiansk direction about the entry of our troops into Kupiansk, which marks the beginning of the battle for the city. According to enemy estimates, two columns of Russian equipment advanced from the Liman Pervy area to Kupiansk.

‘They managed to enter the city and land troops, which dispersed among the houses in the Svatovskaya Street area.’ But Ukraine’s military declared this morning its troops were in full control of Kupiansk and that their forces had stopped a Russian advance towards the railway hub. ‘The alleged presence of Russian troops in the city of Kupiansk is not true,’ the Ukrainian military’s General Staff wrote on the Telegram messenger.

A Russian-installed official said earlier that Moscow’s forces were gaining a foothold on the outskirts of the city, more than 2-1/2 years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion. Kupiansk was seized by Moscow’s forces in the early days of their February 2022 invasion and recaptured by Ukrainian troops in a rapid counter-offensive months later. Russian forces suffered an average of around 1,500 dead and injured per day in Ukraine during October, according to the UK’s chief of defence staff.

Admiral Sir Tony Radakin told the BBC 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 programme. He said that while Russia was making gains and putting pressure on Ukraine, the losses were ‘for tiny increments of land’.

The cost of the war, which he put at more than 40 percent of public expenditure on defence and security, is also ‘an enormous drain’ on Russia. With the election of US President-elect Donald Trump casting doubt on US support for Ukraine, Sir Tony said Western allies would stand with them for ‘as long as it takes’. ‘That’s the message President Putin has to absorb and the reassurance for President Zelensky,’ he said. Writing in The Sunday Times, Sir Tony said the growing threat from authoritarian states, including Russia, North Korea, and the Iranian-backed Houthi movement in Yemen, is putting the international community ‘under immense strain’.

‘This is a new era of competition and contest that will last for decades and has the potential to be more disruptive to our economy and our security than anything Britain has experienced in modern times,’ he wrote. This comes just two weeks after NATO’s top brass said Putin has lost more than 600,000 troops in Ukraine , forcing him to rely evermore on foreign support for his invasion. The military bloc’s secretary general Mark Rutte said that as a result of the heavy losses, North Korean troops have been sent to Russia’s Kursk region.

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