Russia Sent T-90M Tanks Against Abrams and Leopards – Then THIS Happened…

In just a few minutes of fighting near eastern Picrosk, Russian forces lost two T90M tanks and two BMP armored vehicles along with an anti-tank cornet team. What shocked many observers is that Ukraine did not lose a single tank in that exchange. The battle happened under heavy electronic warfare conditions where radio signals were almost useless and drones with optical fibers became the only reliable eyes in the sky.

This moment is now raising serious questions about the future of modern warfare. Because for the first time, high-tech western tanks such as the Leopard 2 A6 and the M1 Abrams did not only survive, they took control of the battlefield. This small clash may seem minor compared to large offensives, but what happened in the fog near Daetsk has already caught the attention of military analysts around the world.

Some experts now believe that this could mark the point where traditional Russian tank design begins to fall behind the realities of modern combat. If this assessment is correct, it could change global military planning, weapons investment, and doctrines that have been followed for decades. The key question now is simple but critical.

 Are we watching the beginning of a new era where sensors and drones decide battles instead of steel plates and heavy cannons? East of Picrosk in Donetsk Oblast, a tense standoff unfolded under heavy fog and relentless electronic jamming that turned the morning air into a choking haze of uncertainty and danger. Russian forces pushed hard from three directions to squeeze the Ukrainian lines around nearby towns like Mirad where their mixed armored column rolled forward with grim purpose.

A single T90M ProRive tank took point, its compact frame hugging the ground while two BMP3 carriers trailed close behind, spitting out mechanized infantry who fanned out in ragged lines. Anti-tank teams armed with cornets lurked in the shadows of hedge, ready to pounce on any exposed flanks. The advance aimed to probe the rail spur and tighten the noose on those belleaguered settlements, forcing defenders into a deadly funnel where escape routes narrowed by the hour.

Crews inside the T90M gripped their controls tight as the diesel engine growled low, scanning for threats through modern optics that promised an edge in the merc. Ukrainian commanders chose not to dig in passively against this creeping menace. So they crafted a layered trap that blended heavy steel with nimble scouts.

The Leopard 2 A6 calls sign links 2 settled into a hull down position behind a low burm exposing only its turret like a watchful predator in the grass. Nearby the M1 Abrams under bison three call sign clambored from a drainage ditch. its turbine whining softly as it nestled into a cops of twisted trees for cross cover support.

Bradley infantry fighting vehicles hovered in the rear, their 25mm chain guns primed to rake any breakthroughs and squads of mechanized troops waited with javelins slung over shoulders. What set this setup apart came from the skies where FPV drones tethered by fiber optic cables orbited silently. their operators feeding live feeds immune to the chaos below.

Russian jammers fired up from the east with brutal efficiency, flooding the spectrum and silencing Ukrainian radio chatter that once bounced freely between repeaters. Commands turned to hurried whispers over hardwired lines, and the net fell quiet, except for grally voices confirming positions in code. The T90M pressed on regardless.

 its reactive armor tiles glinting dully as it offset its turret to sniff out windshifts trailed by BMPS that churned mud into sprays. Infantry dismounted in bursts, pretending at cover among cold grass and collapsed barns, but thermal blooms from their gear betrayed them to watchful screens. Ukrainian spotters in Leopard 2 caught the first glimmers.

 A hot silhouette idling behind an embankment that screamed trouble. The Abrams’ loader checked blowoff panels with a ritual pad, ensuring ammo stayed safe behind armored doors while the driver idled at 1,500 RPM, poised to twist away from incoming fire. The jamming blanket thickened, yet fiber lines snaked through culverts delivered crisp images of enemy trails, turning invisible foes into targets etched in white heat.

As contact loomed, the battlefield stirred with the cough of engines and the faint crackle of strained calms, pulling both sides into a rhythm of calculated risks. The lead BMP peaked from cover, its belly glowing like a furnace on Leopard 2’s display, and the Leopard’s gunner trimmed his aim with steady hands.

Russian mortars probed the air in response, their thuds echoing off the mist shrouded treeine that curled like a snare around the farm lane. Ukrainian infantry edged forward in pairs. Stugna launchers at the ready while Bradley’s revved to provide suppressing fire if the probe turned hot. The T90M’s crew sensed the shift too, sloowing their barrel toward a whisper of movement, but the fog played tricks and jammed signals alike.

Ukrainian scouts outsmarted the suffocating wave of Russian jamming by weaving thin fiber optic cables through underground culverts that carried crystal clearar footage straight into their tanks. These tethered links ignored the electronic chaos above where Russian emitters turned wireless signals into useless noise and left untethered drones falling from the sky.

Inside the Leopard 2, thermal screens lit up with clean video feeds, revealing the battlefield in contrasting layers of blue shadow and burning white heat. The commander leaned toward his panoramic optics, tracking faint silhouettes that grew clearer with each passing second, while the crew of an M1 Abrams watched the same feed through its independent thermal viewer.

Both sides experimented with new techniques, but Ukraine’s fiber tethered system gained a decisive edge, giving operators stable control of FPV craft and stationary cameras, even when radio silence gripped the front. The feed exposed the movement of the Russian armored advance, showing engines burning hot and infantry clustering in shallow cover.

The Leopard Gunner adjusted calmly, placing crosshairs onto the glowing underbelly of the lead BMP as it crept along a fence line. The crew inside likely believed their jammers shielded them, unaware that a silent network had already mapped their position with surgical precision. With targets marked, the Ukrainian armor shifted into position.

 The Leopard settled deeper behind the burm, exposing only its turret, while the Abrams mirrored the maneuver from its wooded firing nest. A tethered FPV drone lifted low, feeding alternate angles and catching troop movement hidden from ground sight lines. Soldiers scattered once the first thermal lock triggered alerts, but the BMP lurched forward into open ground.

The Leopard fired a single controlled shot. The L55 gun thundering as a HATMP round slammed into the BMP’s flank. Flames bloomed instantly, swallowing the vehicle in smoke and molten metal. The second BMP swerved desperately toward trees, but the cable-fed vision betrayed every movement. The Abrams commander issued a short command, and machine gun bursts chased infantry fleeing from the burning wreckage.

Seconds later, a sabot round from the Leopard struck the advancing vehicle, ripping through its glacus and detonating it in a violent arc of debris. Ukrainian infantry moved up with javelins ready, using the live feed to track survivors and secure ground while Russian troops retreated under mortar fire. When the firing faded, what remained was a transformed battlefield.

 The Russian armored probe had collapsed before closing distance, undone not by brute force, but by a network built to see through chaos. As Ukrainian troops rewound their cables and disappeared into the fog, one question lingered like the echo of artillery. If radio goes silent in future wars, will the front lines resemble old trenches once more, but hunted by wired machines instead of men? The Leopard 2, A6, and Abrams M1 turned the foggy killing ground into a shooting gallery, where raw firepower met perfect timing and left Russian armor no chance

to breathe. The Leopard’s long L5 smooth boore gun barked first, hurling a DM63 Sabbat round that flew flat and true, even while the tank rocked over broken ground. That long barrel and rocksolid stabilizer let the gunner hold the crosshair steady at over 2 km. So the tungsten dart arrived exactly where the thermal picture promised, right under the first BMP’s turret ring.

Metal flashed white hot for a heartbeat. Then the carrier exploded in a rolling orange cloud that swallowed the crew compartment and flung the turret basket 20 m away. Seconds later, the Abrams M1 joined the song. Its own 120 mm cannon spitting a silver needle that carved through the second BMP’s front plate like a hot knife through soft butter.

The carrier’s rear doors blew outward and burning fuel painted the grass in long streaks as survivors stumbled out into open fields already swept by coaxial machine guns. The Abrams commander never took his eyes off the CITV panoramic site, scanning for the next threat, even while the main gun recoiled and the loader slammed another round home.

That independent viewer sits high on the turret roof and spins 360° so he could spot fresh targets while the gunner stayed locked on the original kill. The Leopard crew worked the same way. The commander hunting with his wide-angle peer sight while the gunner finished the job below. Together, the two tanks poured accurate fire down range faster than the Russian column could scatter, turning a planned advance into a panicked scramble where infantry spilled out of burning holes straight into pre-planned kill zones.

Russian troops now face the nightmare every mechanized soldier dreads, abandoning their rides under heavy fire with nowhere safe to run. Some tried to sprint for a collapsed barn, but the Abrams turret tracked them smoothly, and the coaxial 7.62 mm cracked out short, angry bursts that dropped runners in midstride.

The Leopard pivoted on its tracks, bringing the big gun to bear on a third vehicle that tried to reverse. And another Sabbat flashed across the field to end that hope in a single thunderclap. Within 90 seconds, the entire Russian escort element lay wrecked or burning, leaving the T90M suddenly alone and exposed on ground it thought was safe.

What makes Western tanks so hard to kill in these moments is the way they store ammunition far from the crew. The Abrams keeps most of its ready rounds in a sealed bustle at the back of the turret behind heavy blowoff panels designed to vent a cookoff straight up into the sky instead of through the fighting compartment.

When hits do penetrate, crews often climb out shaken but alive. Something seen again and again on helmet cam footage rolling out of this war. The Leopard uses a similar layout with extra armor around the whole stowage. So even a mobility kill rarely becomes a crew kill. The Russian push had shattered against superior guns, better eyes, and a design that offer better safety for crews.

The first T90M finally rolled over the low ridge like a steel shark hunting scent. and the Leopard 2 A6 answered before the Russian commander could even finish traversing his turret. The long L55 tube flashed once, bright and sharp in the gray light, and the DM63 Sabot punched straight through the thin seam just below the gun mantlet where the armor is thinnest.

Heat and pressure poured inside the turret ring, cooking wires and frying the gunner’s optics in a heartbeat. The T90M jerked hard, tracks digging deep ruts as the driver tried to reverse, but the damage was already done. The tank sat stunned, turret slewing in useless circles while smoke leaked from every joint.

The Abrams M1 seized the opening and sent an M829 A4 depleted uranium dart screaming across the field. The round struck the left side just behind the reel explosive panels, blew the reactive bricks outward in a perfect ring of orange fire, and kept going until it smashed into the carousel autoloader beneath the turret floor.

One Russian tanker managed to kick his hatch open and half climbed out, waving hands in surrender. But the fight was far from over. A Bradley burst from the treeine, roared forward at full speed. Its 25mm Bushmaster chain gun already spinning up. The gunner walked a long burst across the T90M’s roof and sensor mast, shattering the commander’s panoramic sight and turning the laser rangefinder into twisted scrap.

Sparks showered the turret like angry fireflies, and the Russian tank went completely blind. Its turret motor winded helplessly while the crew inside screamed over intercom that no longer worked. The Bradley kept pouring fire until the T90M sat deaf, blind, and burning. A 60tonon paperweight in the middle of the field.

Then danger flipped direction. A Cornet team hidden in a hedge 800 m away fired a missile that streaked low and fast toward the Abrams. The bright trail cut through drifting smoke, missing the turret by inches before it slammed into a ruined tractor shed and turned the building into a fireball. Ukrainian infantry on the net, shouted the grid coordinates in calm, clipped voices, and within seconds, a Stugnip crew rose from cover, locked on, and launched a top attack missile that arked high before diving straight onto the

coordinate position. The explosion erased the launcher and its operators in one orange bloom. While nearby artillery batteries dropped a quick three round clusters that finished any survivors still trying to reload. With the anti-tank threat gone, attention snapped back to the crippled T90M. One hatch finally flew open and three crewmen tumbled out, coughing and stumbling away from their wounded beast.

They never made it 10 steps. A cheap Ukrainian FPV drone guided by fiber cable that ignored every jammer in the sky dropped out of the fog like a hawk and slipped straight through the open commander’s hatch. 2.6 kg of shaped charge detonated right above the ready rack. Flames shot out of every opening at once, out of the barrel, out of the driver’s hatch, out of the turret roof like a dragon coughing fire.

The entire tank became a torch. turret locked in place while the hull glowed dull red from the inside. The second T90M broke from the treeine far to the south, engine howling at full throttle, and tried a classic Ridgeline sprint to roll up the Leopard’s blind side. The driver hugged the reverse slope, keeping only a sliver of turret roof visible while the gunner hunted for a firing window.

Russian commanders clearly hoped the move would turn the tables, catch the western tanks exposed, and punch a hole through the Ukrainian line before the morning turned worse. The tank raced along the hedge rows, tracks chewing frozen earth, turret offset, and ready to snap left. The moment the Leopard’s hull appeared, a tethered FPV drone, guided by the same unbreakable fiber cable that had already gutted the escorts, peeled away from its orbit and dropped low over the fields.

The operator sat in a shallow ditch 500 m back, joystick steady in gloved hands, watching the live feed as the little quadcopter skimmed treetops and then dove toward the moving tank. Jammers screamed uselessly overhead. The thin wire trailing behind the drone carried every pixel straight to the screen. The T90M crew sensed danger too late.

The commander shouted for hard reverse, but 60 tons do not stop on command. The drone slipped under the gun barrel, banked sharply, and threaded the narrow gap between turret and hull where the ring armor is thinnest. The shaped charge went off with a flat crack that echoed across the bowl. Pressure slammed upward, blew every hatch wide open like tin cans, and sent a column of flame punching through the roof fence.

Ammunition inside the carousel cooked instantly, popping in rapid chain bursts that turned the fighting compartment into an oven. The turret locked mid traverse, barrel sagging toward the dirt, while fire poured from the driver’s hatch and even the boar evacuator. The tank rolled another 10 m on momentum alone, then nosed into a birch tree and stopped forever.

 A smoking monument on the edge of the field. Silence fell for three heartbeats, broken only by the hiss of burning paint and the distant thud of retreating Russian boots. The Abrams commander simply said, “Lane cold.” And the Leopard gunner answered with a quiet, “Confirmed.” Bradley’s reversed into cover. Infantry squads advanced in short rushes to secure the ground, and the fiber cables reeled in like fishing line after the last cast.

Nothing moved on the Russian side except scattered survivors running for the rear. When the smoke finally thinned, the tally told the story without mercy. Two T90M holes sat ruined and burning, their turrets twisted, crews gone. Two BMP3 carriers lay gutted beside a fuel truck now reduced to blackened ribs. The Cornet team was erased and Russian infantry melted away in broken groups, leaving helmets and rifles in the mud.

On the Ukrainian side, the scoreboard stayed clean. No tanks lost, only scorched paint on one Abram skirt, a few empty smoke grenade tubes, and a handful of spent Sabbat casings scattered around hold down positions. The Abrams turbine settled into a lazy idol. The Leopard’s diesel ticked as it cooled, and crews swapped water bottles and dark jokes over the net.

The rail spur stayed open. Prosk still breathed and two Western tanks plus a few hundred worth of drones had just erased millions in Russian hardware before breakfast. One question now hangs in the cold air. When every anti-tank missile can be jammed, will cheap wired FPVS become the new kings of armor killing? The ambush at Picovsk has ripped the veil off what modern warfare really looks like.

 tanks are no longer the uncontested kings of the battlefield. Two T90M machines, among Russia’s most advanced, were taken out despite layers of reactive armor. This showed that even the most heavily armored vehicles are vulnerable when sensors, drones, and electronic warfare networks dominate the fight. This battle is more than a localized skirmish.

 It’s a warning flare for every country that still puts blind faith in armor and firepower alone. The real power now lies in integration. The ability to combine precision sensors, fiber tethered drones, and coordinated infantry support to control the battlefield without exposing a single tank to unnecessary risk. For nations clinging to Soviet style armored doctrine, the question is urgent. adapt or risk obsolescence.

The future of combat might not be about who has the biggest guns or thickest armor. It may belong to those who can orchestrate technology, unmanned systems, and human crews as one deadly synchronized force. So, the question remains, in tomorrow’s battlefield, will armor survive, or will smart systems and integrated tactics rule the day? If this breakdown shocked you, hit like, share with fellow military enthusiasts, and subscribe to Military Force for more insights into the hidden truths of modern warfare.