The day Russia’s advanced battle tank met its match in Ukraine

In early 2023, Ukrainian sources confirmed the destruction of the BMPT Terminator, one of Russia's advanced armored fighting vehicles, highlighting the persistent severity and intricate nature of the conflict in Ukraine.

Serhii Haidai, then-head of Luhansk’s Regional Military Administration, shared images of a destroyed Russian BMPT Terminator armored vehicle to his Telegram channel on February 9th, 2023.

This was the first confirmed kill of Russia’s most advanced tank support vehicle, a weapon that Russian officals seemed supremely confident in when its deployment to Ukraine was announced in May 2022. 

"So many beautiful words about the car being almost impossible to destroy….almost," Haidai wrote sarcastically on his Telegram channel according to a Yahoo Finance translation. 

The Terminator BMPT was designed as a tank support vehicle that was meant to protect Russian armor from anti-tank forces according to Insider’s Steve Balestrieri. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By Kirill Borisenko, Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

“Interest in the design peaked after Russia's disastrous invasion of Chechnya in the mid-1990s,” Balestrieri wrote in a 2020 article on the BMPT Terminator. 

“At the time,” the Insider journalist added, “Russian forces employed Soviet-era tactics which resulted in some of their units being decimated in urban warfare.”

Urban warfare in Ukraine has proven to be as devastating as fighting in Chechnya, and that may be why Russia’s General Staff decided to deploy the Terminator in 2022.

In December 2022, a Russian video of a Terminator attacking Ukrainian positions in Luhansk showed that the weapon was more than just useful in urban combat operations. 

“During recent fighting, the enemy’s dugout was practically trampled on, and the enemy fled at the sight of the Terminator,” A Terminator Crew Commander wrote in a statement to RIA Novosti. “For them, this is an unfamiliar machine and incomprehensible.” 

Some Western journalists also commented on the combat effectiveness of Russia’s most advanced tank support vehicle, as well as the possible future it has as a war-winning weapon in Ukraine. 

"The BMPT is designed to overcome the vulnerability of the tank on a modern battlefield teeming with light anti-tank weapons," wrote David Hambling of Forbes in January 2023.

“It may end up as the last vehicle standing,” Hambling added, “and more relevant to the outcome of the war than the tanks which have become such a vital topic of discussion.”

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By Vitaly V. Kuzmin, CC BY-SA 4.0

Hambling noted that Russia’s BMPT is equipped with a main armament of two stabilized 30mm autocannons with a range of 2000 meters and four Ataka anti-tank guided missile launchers that can be used against heavier targets, which have a range of 6000 meters. 

Photo by Twitter @kmldial70

None of the now-destroyed Terminator's weaponry was a match for Ukranian forces, however. It is still unknown what caused the initial damage to the vehicle, but it was quickly finished off by artillery from the Ukrainian Marine Corps’ 140th Separate Reconnaissance Battalion. 

“Hasta la vista, baby,” read a post on the Facebook page of Ukraine’s Marine Corps Command which also shared a video of the destroyed BMPT. 

“So, we see that this allegedly ‘invincible’ and ‘unique’ combat vehicle burns just as well as the rest of Russian scrap metal,” the post continued according to Google Translation. “Glory to the marines! Glory to Ukraine!”

As of December 12th, the Dutch open-source intelligence firm Oryx, which has been tracking verifiable equipment losses in the war through photo and video evidence, reported Russia has lost 3 BMPTs since Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.