MOSCOW, April 26. /TASS/. A Ukrainian lawmaker confirmed on Friday that Ukraine’s army had pulled US-made Abrams tanks from the battlefield due to their vulnerability to Russian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
"For some reason, all were excited by the news that we had moved Abrams tanks from the first line of the battlefield. Yes, the nature of the war has changed and armor worth millions [of US dollars] becomes easy prey to a drone that costs several thousand dollars," Verkhovna Rada MP Maxim Buzhansky wrote on his Telegram channel.
Thirty-one American tanks have become "unfit for the classical deployment," the lawmaker said, adding that the deliveries of Abrams and Leopard tanks were intended to "raise the Ukrainian army’s armor parity at least somehow."
The Associated Press news agency reported on April 25, citing US officials that the Ukrainian military had stopped using American Abrams tanks due to their vulnerability to Russian drones. The United States will work with the Ukrainians to reshape tactics as "the battlefield has changed substantially" by the active use of Russian drones. These weapons have made it more difficult for Ukraine to protect tanks that are quickly detected and hunted by drones, it said.
As The New York Times reported earlier, Russian forces have destroyed five US-made Abrams tanks over the past two months. At least three other armored vehicles have been moderately damaged since the tanks were sent to the frontline early this year. Meanwhile, Peter Suciu, observer of the US-based magazine The National Interest, called Ukraine’s conflict zone "a graveyard of tanks" in light of the destruction of Western armor delivered to Kiev.
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said on April 2 that the Ukrainian military had lost over 80,000 troops and 14,000 weapons, including more than 1,200 tanks and other armored combat vehicles since January.