US Bradley Destroyed in Kursk Attack, Video Appears to Show

Russia's government has published footage it says shows Moscow's troops destroying several Ukrainian armored vehicles, including a U.S.-supplied Bradley Fighting Vehicle, in Russia's Kursk region after Kyiv launched a cross-border assault earlier this week.

Russia destroyed a Bradley Fighting Vehicle along with three other armored vehicles at an unspecified point along the border of the Kursk region, Moscow's Defense Ministry said on Thursday.

The Russian government shared footage it said showed the attacks on the U.S.-donated Bradley. Marina Miron, a postdoctoral researcher with the War Studies department at King's College London, told Newsweek that although grainy, it appears to show an M2 Bradley.

Newsweek could not independently verify when or where the clip was filmed.

Russia's Defense Ministry said on Tuesday that hundreds of Ukrainian fighters with Ukraine's 22nd Mechanized Brigade, almost a dozen tanks and more than 20 armored vehicles had crossed into Kursk, which is just over the border from Ukraine's Sumy region. Russia then said up to 1,000 fighters had been part of the push.

Russia's border regions have felt the brunt of the war in Ukraine, frequently reporting shelling and drone attacks from its neighbor. Anti-Kremlin Russian groups in Ukraine said they had carried out cross-border raids previously in the war, but this appears to be the first time a Ukrainian mechanized push with Kyiv's regular forces has taken place.

Ukrainian officials have been tight-lipped about the operation. However, Andrii Kovalenko, an official with Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, wrote on Telegram that the Kremlin was "lying about the controllability of the situation in the Kursk region."

"Russia does not control the border," Kovalenko said on Tuesday, after teasing that "there will be a lot of news from the Kursk region."

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's office, appeared to suggest on X, formerly Twitter, that activity in Kursk could be a test of the Russian population's support for the war.

The Kremlin said it repelled the attacks on Wednesday, and the chief of Russia's Armed Forces General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, said Russian forces "have stopped the enemy's advance deep into Russian territory" in Kursk.

This has been largely contradicted by Russia's cadre of prominent military bloggers. Much of the information about the raid, in lieu of reliable and detailed accounts from Russian and Ukrainian authorities, has come from open sources and from Russia's community of bloggers. Although often aligned with the Kremlin, these accounts are used as valuable sources.

Several bloggers reported that Ukrainian forces had reached up to 15 kilometers, or just over 9 miles, into Kursk by Wednesday.

Ukraine had advanced a confirmed 10 kilometers into Kursk by Wednesday, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a U.S.-based think tank. Ukrainian forces appear to have made it past at least two Russian defensive lines and a stronghold, the think tank assessed, adding that Russian sources deemed at least 11 Kursk settlements captured by Ukraine. Acting Kursk regional governor, Alexei Smirnov, declared a state of emergency on Wednesday.

"The third day, and the situation has not improved," Russian journalist Alexander Sladkov wrote on Telegram on Thursday.

Several accounts speculated that Ukraine hoped to reach the Kursk nuclear power plant in Kurchatov, west of the city of Kursk. Other reports suggested Ukraine intended to take control of Rylsk, west of Kurchatov and closer to the border.

But it comes at a time when Ukrainian forces are stretched thin, stemming Russian attacks in the northeastern Kharkiv region while feeling the pressure of steady Russian gains in the east, west of the Russian-controlled city of Avdiivka.

Ukraine's 47th Mechanized Brigade—the only known recipient of the more than 300 Bradleys and 31 M1 Abrams tanks sent by the U.S.—is currently deployed west of Avdiivka, battling Russia's advance toward the strategic Ukrainian-held city of Pokrovsk.

It is not clear if Ukraine has moved at least some of its Bradleys, and their operators in the 47th, from the heart of fighting in Donetsk to support the Kursk incursion, or whether the vehicles have been transferred to different brigades in the north.

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