Does Video Show Ukraine Missiles Take Out Four Russian Tanks in Minutes?

A Ukrainian anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) Stuhna-P appears in a social media clip to demolish four Russian tanks, reportedly valued between $1.5-3 million each, in a span of three minutes.

The video, allegedly showing combat near Izyum, Kharkiv region, was published over the past week and shared widely on Twitter and Reddit, among other platforms, receiving thousands of views in the past 24 hours.

Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the war has become one of the most widely and thoroughly covered conflicts in history, with stark video records of direct combat, grenade drops, and drone dogfights regularly appearing in mainstream media and social media channels.

While some were impressed by yet another shocking piece of combat footage to emerge from the conflict, others expressed doubts about its provenance. Newsweek Misinformation Watch investigated the context and claims surrounding the video.

A video published on Reddit on Tuesday, April 25, 2023, with the caption "Ukrainian Stugna-P atgm destroys 4 russian tanks in 4 minutes," received more than 6,600 upvotes and tens of thousands of views.

The clip was shared by a number of pro-Ukraine accounts on Twitter, with one post by the account "Getty" receiving nearly 30,000 views.

"Destroyed 4 tanks in 3 minutes🔥🔥🔥🔥 Calculation of export Stugna-P in Izyum direction. Once again: four Russian tanks in three minutes!" the post said.

"Ukrainian soldier destroys 4 tanks in 3 minutes with Stugna-P (Skif Export Version) near Izyum," wrote another user who shared the video.

After a few users argued that the video is actually old, one of the original posters insisted that it was recent.

"This is [a] new video, not [from] last year, you can check the difference if you still have last [year's] video because I have watched both and it [is] different," the user Getty wrote.

However, after reverse image searching screengrabs from the clip, Newsweek Misinformation Watch established that the video is indeed misleadingly taken out of context, with the footage originally published more than a year ago, in April 2022.

The clip, published on Monday, April 25, 2022, matches the scenes in the tweeted video, as does the Russian-language commentary of the events by the camera operator.

One clue that the clip is dated comes from the Arabic-language interface on the Stuhna-P screen; as was reported at the time, shortly after the conflict began, Ukraine started to deploy the ATGMs that were initially destined for exports to the Middle East.

As those were phased out or replaced by newer models, later videos of missile strikes appeared to show Ukrainian- or English-language interfaces, adding to the evidence that the clip is dated.

While Newsweek cannot independently verify whether the incident itself was described accurately at the time, the claim about four Russian tanks is consistent with what the Ukrainian military channels claimed, and what was reported in the media at the time.

The original video appears to have been first published by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine via an independent Telegram channel on April 25, 2022.

The caption states that "4 tanks" were destroyed in three minutes, and geolocates the incident to Izyum. Since then, Izyum, in the Kharkiv region, has been liberated by Ukrainian forces in the Autumn 2022 counteroffensive, further undermining the suggestion that direct ground combat is taking place in the area today.

The specific claims about the relative value of the vehicles and missiles appear to be mostly accurate. Though it is not clear what Russian tanks are being blown up, their value typically ranges from $0.5 million (for the most dated T-72s) to around $2.2-3 million (for the most widely deployed T-80s).

The price per missile is also accurately stated at around $20,000, meaning that the total cost of the strikes was under $100,000.

Newsweek has reached out to the Ukrainian and Russian defense ministries for comment via email.

Weaponized misinformation and broader information warfare, including misleadingly used or fake combat footage, has been rife during this conflict, as Newsweek has previously reported.

Pro-Kremlin channels last month promoted an unevidenced (and highly suspect) claim that a Russian Kinzhal missile destroyed a "NATO bunker" in Ukraine, with hundreds supposedly killed in the strike. Newsweek debunked that story, which appeared to have been fabricated and laundered via a network of obscure and questionable media sources.

Similarly misleading reports surfaced of a Ukrainian "battle car" wiping out a Russian military column (the video transpired to be a VFX creation) and of Chinese tanks having been spotted crossing Russia's border.