'Limited Edition' Russian BTR-90 Seen Abandoned in Destroyed Vehicle Column

Russian forces in a hot spot of fighting in eastern Ukraine have lost a rarely-seen armored personnel carrier not far from the embattled town of Avdiivka, new footage appears to show.

An abandoned BTR-90 armored personnel carrier can be seen in a column of destroyed and damaged vehicles near the village of Krasnohorivka, in the contested Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, footage posted online by Ukraine's 110th Separate Mechanized Brigade appears to show.

Newsweek could not independently verify this clip, and has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.

The BTR-90 was developed in the immediate post-Soviet period of the early 1990s but fewer than a dozen BTR-90s were constructed, according to Forbes. The eight-wheeled vehicles were never a hit, relegated to storage and unutilized by Russian forces that had plenty of earlier-model armored personnel carriers at their disposal, according to the publication.

But now, deep into the second full winter of all-out war in Ukraine, both sides have burned through resources like armored vehicles, particularly since Ukraine launched its summer counteroffensive in early June.

Back in October, Ukrainian and international media picked up on footage circulating online that appeared to show at least one of Russia's BTR-90s deployed around the eastern town of Avdiivka in a first for the gruelling, attritional war.

Moscow's forces began a concerted push around the town on October 10, coming up against heavily-fortified Ukrainian defenses. But in the weeks since, Russia has made creeping progress in encircling Avdiivka — but not without a painful cost to Moscow's armored vehicle reserves and the personnel operating them.

Evidence of BTR-90s in eastern Ukraine in October was quickly seen as a mark of sky-high Russian armored vehicle losses. In the first month of the Avdiivka campaign, Moscow's troops lost 14 times as many vehicles as Ukraine's fighters did around the town, Forbes reported in mid-November.

On Tuesday, the General Staff of Ukraine's military said its forces had "repelled" 14 Russian attacks in the section of the front line sweeping around the Donetsk town of Marinka, including Novomykhailivka to the south of the town and the village of Krasnohorivka. It is not clear whether this assessment refers to the village directly north of Adviivka or the settlement bearing the same name west of Donetsk City.

Russia's Defense Ministry did not mention Avdiivka nor Krasnohorivka in an operational update on Monday, but the U.K. government described Avdiivka as the "scene of the most intense combat on the front."

Ukrainian fighters had likely managed to stop Moscow claiming full control of the village of Stepove, which Russia hopes to use to encircle the town, the British Defense Ministry said on Monday.