On Monday, the Ukrainian army joked that it has “dragons” in its arsenal, but the released video of the destruction of a Russian tank is more interesting than it seems at first glance.

“When you have dragons on your side,” the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine simply said on its Twitter page, posting a video, perhaps poking fun at the “dragon’s teeth” deployed by the Russian military across the front to bolster defenses. line

As explained by the administrators of the OSINTtechnical page, which specializes in monitoring the military equipment of both sides of the war in Ukraine, the video actually recorded the impact of the Javelin anti-tank system on the Russian T-80U in the Donetsk region, most likely belonging to the 21st motorized infantry battalion of the Ukrainian army.

The number of video recordings of attacks on Russian tanks and armored vehicles with Javelin systems has significantly decreased over the past six months, as the static battles around Bakhmut have led to a sharp reduction in the actions of armored and mechanized units.

In addition, the Ukrainian military has recently received a large number of artillery munitions and drones, weapons that can engage Russian tanks at much greater distances than these man-portable anti-tank weapons, thus reducing the danger to the Ukrainian military when using them.

A notable exception was a video that appeared on social media in early April showing two Russian tanks being hit by missiles fired from Javelin systems, with one first managing to escape before spectacularly exploding.

Optical illusion and the destruction of a Russian tank

What’s interesting about the new video is that it shows a Russian T-80U tank falling victim to a classic Javelin strike, a missile falling on it.

Such hits usually cause the catastrophic detonation of ammunition on board the combat vehicle, resulting in spectacular explosions that lift the tank’s turret tens of meters into the air.

However, in this case, the hit caused the tank to rupture, and the detonation explosion had a horizontal trajectory, which created the illusion that it actually belonged to the weapon that hit the tank, hence the joke of the Ukrainian army about the “dragon” in its equipment.

A video that captured an equally impressive visual effect was released by the Ukrainian military in late January, but this video captured a series of strikes that destroyed a group of Russian soldiers.

In this case, however, the explosion did belong to the weapon that set it off, most likely also anti-tank systems, although it is not clear what type was used in this attack on the invading army soldiers.

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