Moscow says helicopters hit German tanks in Ukraine; analysts say they were tractors

Russian military officials insist one of their helicopters knocked out German-made Leopard 2 tanks taking part in Ukraine’s counteroffensive this week, but analysts say their targets were tractors and other farming equipment.

Video on the Russian military’s Telegram channel shows one of the vehicles being targeted by a Ka-52 helicopter before the launch of an anti-tank guided missile. The footage indicates a direct hit.

Russian military officials told the TASS news agency that fighting on Tuesday resulted in 1,500 Ukrainian casualties and the destruction of eight Leopard 2 tanks, three French-made AMX-10 tanks and more than 100 other armored vehicles.

But analysts quickly noticed that there was something wrong with Moscow’s account of what happened.

The Leopard 2 is a third-generation German-made main battle tank with a 120mm smoothbore cannon that has been in service since 1979. In January 2023, officials in Berlin said they would begin providing Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine in the wake of Russia’s invasion.

The targets destroyed in the video lack several features of Leopard 2 tanks, such as the barrel, the distinctive armor plating to protect against mines and missiles, and the tracks that run the length of the vehicle.

“Why it was necessary to give out frames with an erroneous defeat of agricultural equipment for an actual video of the defeat of the Leopards, we do not know,” the Russian “Military Informer” Telegram channel said.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group mercenary force and a regular critic of Russian military officials, mocked them for a “job well done” on his Telegram channel.

According to Samuel Bendett, a Russian-speaking expert at the Center for Naval Analyses think tank, one of the crew members aboard the Russian helicopters said “Let’s test on this” before firing the missile.

“To me, [it] sounds like they wanted to test their systems on this unfortunate tractor,” Mr. Bendett tweeted.