Russia’s Tanks ERASED… Putin’s Infantry WIPED OUT… Ukraine NOW DOMINATES the Kharkiv Front
A Russian tank rolls toward the Kharkiv front—and disappears without a trace. With tanks too vulnerable, Putin is sending soldiers instead, sacrificing lives in a deadly game Ukraine is dominating. Russian armor has been absent from Kharkiv for months, and even reserves behind the lines are under constant threat from Ukrainian strikes. FPV drones may support Moscow, but they can’t take ground. Ukraine still controls Kharkiv—here’s why Russia’s strategy is failing.
#militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis
A Russian tank rolls toward the Kharkiv front—and disappears without a trace. With tanks too vulnerable, Putin is sending soldiers instead, sacrificing lives in a deadly game Ukraine is dominating. Russian armor has been absent from Kharkiv for months, and even reserves behind the lines are under constant threat from Ukrainian strikes. FPV drones may support Moscow, but they can’t take ground. Ukraine still controls Kharkiv—here’s why Russia’s strategy is failing.
#militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis
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00:00A Russian tank rolls toward the Kharkiv front. Then it vanishes, gone without a trace and erased
00:07from the map forever. Putin, in his infinite wisdom, comes to a conclusion. If he can't send
00:13tanks, he'll send soldiers. This is insanity. Putin would rather lose 100 soldiers than one
00:19tank, but both vanish on a front that has become one of the most lethal in the Ukraine war.
00:24Ukraine now dominates in Kharkiv. All that's left is a graveyard of Russian armor and soldiers.
00:30Russia's tanks haven't been seen in the Kharkiv sector for months, which has made the armor
00:34that once formed the backbone of the entire Russian strategy a complete non-factor in
00:39Russia's assaults on that particular front. That's according to the deputy company commander
00:43of Ukraine's 13th Brigade, who goes by the callsign Pirok. He made the revelations during
00:48a March 2nd interview with Army TV, stating,
00:51We haven't seen heavy equipment on our axis for a long time, especially armored. This doesn't
00:56mean that Russia's armor, or what's left of it, is safe.
00:58Though Russia isn't sending its tanks into Kharkiv, it is doing its best to amass as much
01:03armor as it possibly can behind the combat lines. Presumably, Russia is trying to build
01:08up its reserve of tanks, armored vehicles, and artillery for an upcoming offensive that
01:11will see it finally provide some sort of support to the infantry that's getting destroyed
01:16on the Kharkiv front line. But that armor and heavy equipment aren't arriving anytime soon,
01:20and due to the 13th Brigade's actions, it's getting slowly destroyed, even though it's miles
01:25away from the front. Strikes on such equipment take place if we spot it in the enemy rear,
01:29already beyond the border, Pirok reveals in his interview. This isn't necessarily easy for Ukraine
01:34to achieve. A tank that is trying to make its way through a Ukrainian kill zone can be spotted by
01:39reconnaissance drones far more easily than one that's being held back across the border. However,
01:44as Pirok puts it, if reconnaissance provides us with data, we manage to fly there and strike
01:48artillery or tank positions located far from the border itself. Let's unpack that for a moment.
01:53According to Pirok, Russia is so terrified of losing yet more tanks in Kharkiv that it's trying
01:58to keep them in secure locations on its own territory. However, Russia is also guarding those
02:03locations so poorly that Ukraine is able to conduct strikes on the tanks while they're inside Russia,
02:08which in turn means that they will never end up making an impact on the Kharkiv front.
02:12Just what is Russia trying to achieve here? If it's trying to amass armor stockpiles,
02:17surely it's better to do so outside of the range of Ukraine's drones and missiles.
02:21Keeping those stockpiles in border regions is a dumb decision given that Ukraine has shown again
02:26and again that it can hit these regions. It's enough to boggle the mind, as is Putin's insane
02:31decision to send meat instead of metal to fight on the Kharkiv front, which is costing Russia
02:35hundreds of soldiers per week. Keep those numbers and Putin's insane strategy in mind,
02:40because we'll be coming back to both in just a few minutes. But before we do, we have to explore
02:44what on earth is happening in Kharkiv that has led Russia down the grim path of sacrificing cannon
02:49fodder due to Putin being so terrified of losing yet more tanks to Ukraine's defenses.
02:54But perhaps that statement alone is almost enough to explain it. Russia's tank losses in Ukraine are
02:59enormous, and right now Putin seems more focused on putting out a fire that has already spread far
03:04beyond his control than he is on preserving the manpower that he needs to maintain his attritional
03:08campaign in Ukraine. Just one look at Russia's tank losses in Ukraine so far is enough to explain
03:13what is now happening in Kharkiv. According to Ukraine's Ministry of Finance, Russia has lost
03:1811,727 tanks as of March 5th. The war has been raging for a little over four years, so that
03:25gives
03:26us an annual average loss of a little over 2,900. However, those figures will naturally be weighted
03:31in favor of the early years of Putin's faltering campaign, as Russian armor is being withdrawn all
03:36over the country. You can't lose tanks that you don't deploy, seems to be the Russian logic. Of course,
03:41that doesn't mean a whole lot to the soldiers who are being sent to the front lines without any armor.
03:46Russia's tank problems have been a major source of news for almost as long as Putin's supposed
03:50special military operation has been ongoing. After Russia failed in its initial and very tank-heavy
03:55invasion, Putin thought the Ukraine war would settle into an attritional battle. Russia would win.
04:00It had to, by virtue of its enormous number of tanks alone. Of course, Ukraine's drones, along with
04:06anti-tank weapons provided by the West, threw a wrench into the workings of that particular plan.
04:10And what Russia has been left doing is asking the same question that was posed by the National
04:14Interest in an October 2025 piece, what happened to all of Russia's tanks?
04:19The major problem for Russia is that its early tank losses in Ukraine were both substantial and
04:23unexpected. As a result, it wasn't long before Russia was being forced to pull from its reserves of
04:28aging Soviet-era tanks just to keep up the numbers. At the beginning of the war, Russia had 24 bases
04:33spread across the country that were full of these old tanks. By October, it had nine left.
04:39And those are emptying out even as Russia tries to conserve its tanks. Russia also has to combine
04:44this depletion of its tank reserves with the fact that it simply isn't building enough tanks to
04:48maintain anything that even slightly resembles the massive mechanized assaults that it unleashed
04:52earlier in the war. Back in October 2025, United24 media reported that Russia had an ambitious plan
04:58to build, overhaul or upgrade 1,118 of its T-90M and T-90M2 main battle tanks, which would bring
05:06its
05:06tank manufacturing somewhere close to the level seen during the Soviet era. But there are a few
05:10problems with this strategy. For one, 1,118 tanks which will be built or refurbished between 2027 and
05:172029 don't exactly cover for Russia losing an average of 2,900 tanks per year. Plus, as Ukraine has
05:23demonstrated many times already, the T-90 is no more capable of defending itself against drone and
05:28anti-tank munitions than any of Russia's older tanks. So what we see here is Russia ramping up
05:33tank production to record-breaking levels, at least in modern times. But that will still only amount to
05:37about 400 T-90s annually when Ukraine is destroying more than seven times that many Russian tanks every
05:43single year. The maths isn't mathing for Russia. Russia is also dealing with its existing tank stockpiles
05:49being on their last legs. That was revealed by United24 media in a February 26th piece,
05:54where it reported that Russia is pulling its last meaningful reserves of tanks, predominantly
05:58T-72 Ural and T-72A tanks, out of storage. Apparently, 452 of these tanks are moving toward
06:06Uralvogonzavod, which is Russia's main armored plant. How many will actually make it into Ukraine isn't
06:11known, but even if all of them do, the numbers we've already shared demonstrate that these last
06:15vestiges of Russia's Soviet stockpiles aren't going to be enough to change the course of the war
06:20for Russia. All of this is why you get the situation we now see in Kharkiv. The few tanks
06:25that Russia still has are being kept as far away from the combat lines as possible, which is pretty
06:29much the opposite of what Russia would want its tanks to be doing. Fire support for infantry has
06:34been replaced by cowering away in bases in the border regions. And every so often, Ukraine is hitting
06:39those bases and the tanks that they contain to provide yet another reminder to Russia that its armor
06:44isn't safe, even when it's on Russia's own territory. All of this has led to Russia switching to new
06:50tactics. First, there's the replacement of tanks with soldiers. Then, there's another strategy,
06:54which has a fatal flaw of its own that we'll reveal toward the end of the video. But first,
06:59a quick side note, you are watching the military show. If you haven't subscribed yet, now is the ideal
07:04time to hit that button so you're always ahead of the curve. So, Putin. People instead of tanks.
07:09How's that working out for Russia? We know that Putin is falling back on sacrificing
07:14soldiers instead of tanks because Barok says as much in his interview. He describes Russia's
07:19current Kharkiv tactics, which involve trying to send small groups of infiltrators behind the combat
07:24lines so that they can set up weak footholds where Ukraine can't find them. These tactics aren't
07:29working for Russia. Nothing remained of those groups that tried to reach our positions, Barok says.
07:34He adds that his brigade also sees no evidence of Russia providing logistics support to these
07:38infiltrators, which goes against the point of sending these tiny units of soldiers behind the
07:42combat lines in the first place. The infiltrators are supposed to set up and wait for support.
07:47With that support, they can push on. Instead, the infiltrators enter, stop, and get shot.
07:52Barok puts it even more bluntly, stating,
07:54their preparation for such actions is hasty, insignificant, and doesn't pose a real threat to us.
07:59And that about sums it up for Russia's infantry in Kharkiv at the moment. There are plenty of reports
08:04that support Barok's claims and roughly align with the timeline of his report.
08:07On January 21st, UNM reported on comments made by Andrey Demchenko, who is the spokesperson for
08:13the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. He commented on a series of assaults that Russia
08:18launched in the Kharkiv region at around that time, noting,
08:20The enemy does not use equipment, but exclusively small infantry groups, small assault groups.
08:25Their number can be different. Russian losses during these assaults reveal that Putin is stupidly
08:30sacrificing soldiers instead of tanks. Enemy losses during this time are 161 occupiers killed
08:36and 146 wounded, Demchenko reported, which is a total that covered Russian infiltration efforts
08:41in the Kharkiv, Pokrovsk, and Liman sectors. These numbers aren't anomalies, by the way.
08:46We'll explain more in a moment. About a week after Demchenko's report,
08:49UK are informed published a piece containing more comments by the same man.
08:53Using small infantry groups, they approach the border and attempt to penetrate deeper into
08:57Ukrainian territory, but they are met with resistance and suffer losses. These groups are
09:01destroyed, Demchenko said. The soldiers in the infantry groups are dying,
09:05literally by the hundreds, he claimed. Which just goes to show that untrained
09:09soldiers aren't really a substitute for solid metal armor.
09:12Russia hasn't really switched away from this crazy Kharkiv strategy either.
09:16In a February 26th report, UK are informed, said that Ukraine's forces
09:19had been preemptively attacking Russian infiltration units that were attempting to get into the Kharkiv
09:24villages of Bohuslavka and Novokruliakivka. Again, it's the same old story ever since Russia was
09:29forced to pull its tanks from Kharkiv. Infiltrators try to move forward. Ukraine spots them.
09:35Infiltrators die. At least this time, Russia was attempting to use the cover provided by
09:39bad weather to conduct its assaults. A little bit of fog is better than nothing at all, but it
09:43wasn't enough to stop the pattern that has clearly emerged in the Kharkiv sector. And that brings us
09:47back nicely to our anomaly comment from a moment ago. The 161 occupiers killed and 146 wounded that
09:54Demchenko reported are par for the course for Russia in Kharkiv and the other border regions,
09:58rather than a one-off loss caused by the failure of a strategy that otherwise works.
10:03We saw something similar in the period between January 12th and 18th when Ukraine's
10:07HART border brigade reported that it had killed 131 Russian infiltrators and injured a further 111
10:14as they attempted to break through the positions that the HART brigade held.
10:17That brigade was supported by artillery and drones, whereas Russia's soldiers were trying to sneak in
10:21close on foot. There could only be one winner, and it wasn't Russia.
10:25We're seeing this type of situation all across the combat lines in Ukraine.
10:29In March, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine's armed forces, Oleksandr Siersky, revealed that Russia had
10:34lost just a hair short of 93,000 soldiers over the course of three winter months, which roughly
10:40divides into a casualty count of 31,000 soldiers per month. It's enormous, and it's the exact sort of
10:45thing that happens when Russia is forced to replace its mechanized units with small teams of infiltrators
10:50that Ukraine can seek and destroy. Even with these smaller units, Russia is experiencing enough casualties
10:55that it's crippling its own military. Plus, it's ruining itself. On February 24,
11:00United 24 media reported that a staggering one in every 25 Russian men aged between 18 and 49
11:06has been killed or maimed since Putin launched the Ukraine invasion. And that seems to be an
11:11underestimate. The figure comes from the investigative outlet Against Vo, which adds that the Ukraine
11:16invasion is the deadliest Russian war since World War II. Adding to this, a joint investigation
11:21conducted by MediaZone and the BBC, managed to confirm the deaths of at least 200,186 Russian
11:28military personnel. The words at least are important here. This is a minimum, not the best-case scenario
11:34for Russia. And what has Russia managed to gain for all of this death? Less than 1% of Ukraine
11:39in 2025.
11:41And nothing at all meaningful in the Kharkiv region, where tanks have vanished and Russian soldiers are
11:46being destroyed by drones and artillery. Better people than tanks, right Putin? Let's just pretend that the
11:51reason you're sending cannon fodder into Kharkiv isn't that you've run out of so much of your
11:55armor that you're scared of losing any more. So, keeping tanks in the border regions isn't working.
12:00They're ineffective there and Ukraine is blowing them up anyway. And sending small infantry units
12:05to infiltrate into Kharkiv isn't working either, as shown by Russia losing about 100 of its soldiers
12:10in the sector every week. But there is one thing that Russia is doing that is at least smarter than
12:14what we've seen so far. It's using more FPV drones. Now, there's a fatal flaw to this approach that
12:20essentially makes it the best of a bad bunch when it comes to Russia's attempts to take Kharkiv.
12:24Stick with us and we'll tell you what that flaw is at the end of the video. For now,
12:27we'll let Pirok explain Russia's latest approach in Kharkiv.
12:31Unfortunately, we observe here a large number of UAVs. We have the whole assortment present,
12:35as along the entire front line. We record airstrikes, Shahids, and quite a large number of
12:41fiber-optic-controlled drones, Pirok says. Ukraine still has the advantage in the air,
12:45Pirok adds, but Russia is leaning more heavily on what are likely upgraded fiber-optic drones to do
12:50damage to Ukraine when its soldiers are failing and its tanks are nowhere to be seen. Russia has
12:54indeed been upgrading its FPV drones for this very purpose. Back in September, Forbes contributor
13:00Vikram Mittal reported that Russia had developed a new type of fiber-optic drone that has an expanded
13:04range. Granted, that report was based on claims made by a Russian military blogger, so the requisite
13:10pinch of salt should be used. However, an extended range is bad for Ukraine when it comes to fiber-optic
13:15drones. These types of drones are shielded against typical electronic warfare and jamming efforts
13:19because their fiber-optic cables offer a direct connection between drone and operator. Longer
13:24cables means the drones can go deeper, which also means that they can target Ukrainian soldiers behind
13:29the combat lines. There is evidence that Russia's upgraded drones are having an impact. On February 26,
13:35Euromiden Press reported that one of Russia's fiber-optic drones had managed to make it into Kharkiv for the
13:39first time since Putin launched his invasion. Resistant to electronic damage, that drone ended
13:45up doing no damage. It got caught up in a tree in the Kyivsky district of Kharkiv the day before
13:50Euromiden
13:50Press published its article. Still, the fact that the Russian drone managed to make it that far supports
13:55the theory that Russia has been extending the range of its unmanned aerial vehicles. That's a clear
14:00challenge for Ukraine's Kharkiv defenders. It means they now have to keep their eyes open for Russia's drones
14:05in and around Kharkiv while they're on the hunt for infiltrators. But here's the problem, the fatal
14:11flaw that we mentioned earlier. Drones can't take territory. They can attack troop groupings and
14:16destroy equipment. However, drones aren't able to set up defenses, claim land, or do any of the things
14:20that Putin needs them to do if Russia is going to make any meaningful advances into Kharkiv. This lack
14:25of territory taking is fine from a defensive standpoint, as we've seen Ukraine prove. Hordes of drones
14:30shredding through Russia's soldiers in the vast kill zones of Ukraine have become a key defensive
14:34strategy for Ukraine. But for Russia to take Kharkiv, and it's nowhere close to doing that,
14:39its new generation of fiber optic drones automatically becomes supporting players.
14:44People and tanks are still needed for Russia to get any real results. And with Russia clearly
14:48struggling to build up its armor reserves and its soldiers dying in droves well outside of Kharkiv,
14:53it's unlikely that Russia will make any meaningful advances in the sector anytime soon. Ukraine still
14:59dominates the Kharkiv front. The sole sprinkling of sanity that Putin has injected into the Russian
15:04strategy on that front isn't going to be enough to make a real difference.
15:08What we're seeing in Kharkiv right now is the outcome of the historic collapse of Russia's entire
15:12tank-based strategy in Ukraine. For decades, Russia relied on its metal monstrosities to project power.
15:19Now, amid Ukrainian drone strikes and industrial strain, Russia's armored icons have turned into
15:24liabilities. You can find out all about how if you watch our video. And if you enjoyed this video,
15:29remember to subscribe to the military show for more updates from the Ukrainian front.
15:34And thank you as always for watching.
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