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By Ellie Cook
Senior Defense Reporter
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Ukrainian forces have taken out a Russian T-90 tank using a first-person view (FPV) drone in a dramatic strike, new footage appears to show, as low-cost uncrewed vehicles continue their battlefield dominance.
Drone footage released by Ukraine's defense ministry on Tuesday seems to show an explosive drone targeting, then hitting, a Russian T-90 tank at an undisclosed location along the front lines.
The clip, posted to social media, then cuts to what appears to be a second drone filming the attack, with fierce flames erupting from the Russian vehicle. The video then shows a third angle recording the strike from a distance.
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Ukraine has often released drone footage purportedly showing Kyiv's forces striking Russian targets, but Newsweek cannot independently verify details of the footage, including when or where it was filmed. The Russian defense ministry has been approached for comment via email.
Ukraine's "Asgard Group" was responsible for the strike on the T-90 tank, the Ukrainian defense ministry said in a brief caption accompanying the video. Described as an "elite drone squad" by the Associated Press, the "Asgard Group" is among the many Ukrainian units making use of a variety of drones to try and gain the upper hand in the 18-month long war.
The conflict has spurred drone innovation at "lightning pace," with new designs appearing on an almost daily basis. Ukraine has been busy building what it has dubbed an "army of drones," a cache of uncrewed vehicles incorporating first-person view drones, kamikaze unmanned aerial vehicles and reconnaissance drones.
"Drones are game changer of the war," Ukraine's minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, said last week in a post to X, formerly Twitter. "We continue to scale up its production."
The T-90 is one of Russia's most modern main battle tanks, with the T-90M variant touted as one of the country's most advanced in-service tanks. At the start of 2023, Russia had 1,800 main battle tanks in its inventory, according to the annual Military Balance, published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank. Of these, around 200 were T-90A tanks, with a further 100 T-90Ms.
It's not clear just how many tanks Russia's military has lost during fighting in Ukraine. However, between February 2022 and the start of October 2023, Moscow's forces lost a confirmed 34-T-90As, one T-90AK, seven T-90S tanks and 46 T-90Ms, according to Dutch open-source intelligence outlet, Oryx.
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