Moment Russian BMP is driven STRAIGHT into a mine blowing vehicle to smithereens 

This is the moment a Russian armoured vehicle was driven straight over a landmine in Ukraine, blowing it to smithereens and sending soldiers running, in yet another instance of Vladimir Putin‘s military displaying inept tactics.

Footage of the mishap showed several Russian soldiers sitting on top of the soviet-era BMP – an infantry fighting vehicle – as a huge blast erupted from underneath it.

The explosion went off as the BMP drove between the wreckages of two other similar looking Russian vehicles, which looked to have met a similar fate. Despite the warning signs, the vehicle barrelled between the wreckages – before blowing up.

A drone captured the footage on the outskirts of the Ukrainian village of Yakovlivka, found in the eastern Donetsk Oblast. The region is in the Russian-occupied Donbas, where fierce fighting continues amid a months-long stalemate.

Video of the incident emerged as Russia blamed saboteurs for explosions at one of its military bases in Moscow-annexed Crimea. This month has seen the peninsula come under attack for the first time since Putin launched his invasion in February.

Ukraine hinted it was responsible as its officials said their strategy was to destroy supply lines supporting Russia’s invasion. 

The blasts on Tuesday engulfed an ammunition depot at a military base in the north of the Crimean peninsula, disrupting trains and forcing the evacuation of 2,000 people from a village, according to Russian officials and news agencies.

Plumes of smoke were later seen at a second Russian military base in central Crimea, Russia’s Kommersant newspaper said. The blasts and smoke followed last week’s explosions at a Russian military air base in Crimea that destroyed eight warplanes. 

Both attacks suggest Ukraine has new long-range strike capabilities that could change the shape of the war going forward.

Attention has also focused in recent days on shelling near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear reactor complex, Europe’s largest, which risks a second Chernobyl disaster.

Each side has blamed the other for heightened risks to the Zaporizhzhia plant, which Russia seized in March, though Ukrainian technicians continue to operate it.

The footage of the Russian BMP, released on Monday, opens with the armoured vehicle driving south-east down a dusty road in Yakovlivka village towards a T-junction, where the road meets another running north-west.

Destroyed buildings are seen to the left of the BMP, while the two wreckages are shown lying in a field on the other side of the T-junction. A number of Russian soldiers are shown sitting on top of the armoured vehicle as it advances.

The operational BMP is driven quickly across the perpendicular road and between the wreckages, but as it passes between them, an explosion erupts from beneath it, sending flames into the air and smoke billowing in all directions.

Still smoking, the BMP comes to a stop and the soldiers are seen jumping down from the vehicle and scattering. Some slump to the ground, while others run or crawl as fast as they can away from the BMP. It is unclear if any soldiers were inside at the time, or how many casualties there were in the explosion.

Seconds after the explosion, the drone footage also shows another small group of camouflaged soldiers appearing out of the shrubbery in the field. 

Commenting on the video, some Twitter users suggested these could have been Ukrainian saboteurs who laid the trap for the Russian BMP. 

Others suggested they could have fired an anti-tank missile to destroy the vehicle, and that it was a missile, not a mine, that destroyed it. However, the footage showed the explosion originating from underneath the BMP, suggesting it was in-fact a mine.

Another user suggested the second group of soldiers were another Russian crew from one of the other destroyed BMPs lying on the side of the road. 

The footage is the latest example of Russian military vehicles being destroyed in Ukraine. Putin has seen thousands of his vehicles destroyed or captured by Kyiv’s forces since he ordered his armies across the border on February 24.

According to Oryx, a military blog tracking Russian losses, Moscow has lost more than 5,200 vehicles in the conflict – more than 3,300 of which have been destroyed.

Oryx counts losses through visual confirmations, meaning its numbers are considered the minimum number of vehicles destroyed.

While Russia has deployed Soviet-era tactics and military hardware, Ukraine has deployed smaller, more mobile units – to great effect – that can strike targets and quickly retreat from danger before the invaders can react.

Ukraine has also made effective use of U.S.-supplied weaponry, especially the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), and Russia has taken a series of major blows as a result. It is believed HIMARS were used in the attacks on Crimea.

Russia’s defence ministry claimed the explosions at the ammunition depot were ‘a result of sabotage’.

The Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014, is the main supply route for its forces in southern Ukraine and the base for its Black Sea fleet.

Ukraine did not confirm or deny responsibility for the explosions though its officials cheered Russia’s setbacks.

Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak and chief of staff Andriy Yermak both exulted on social media at ‘demilitarisation’, an apparent mocking reference to the word Russia uses to justify its invasion.

Podolyak told Britain’s Guardian newspaper later that Ukraine’s strategy was to destroy Russian ‘logistics, supply lines and ammunition depots and other objects of military infrastructure.’

‘It’s creating a chaos within their own forces,’ he said.

As Ukraine considers a counter-offensive in the south, the explosions raised the prospect of new dynamics in the six-month-old war if Ukraine has capability to strike deeper in Russian-occupied territory or pro-Ukraine groups are having success with guerrilla-style attacks.

President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Ukrainians to steer clear of Russian military bases and ammunition stores and said the explosions could have various causes, including incompetence.

‘But they all mean the same thing – the destruction of the occupiers’ logistics, their ammunition, military and other equipment, and command posts, saves the lives of our people,’ he said in an evening address.

An electricity substation also caught fire in Tuesday’s blasts, according to footage on Russian state television. Seven trains were delayed and rail traffic on part of the line in northern Crimea had been suspended, Russia’s RIA news agency said.

Elsewhere, Ukraine said on Monday that HIMARS were used to strike a Wagner military base in the occupied city of Popasna after its location was inadvertently revealed by a Russian war propagandist.

Russian war propagandist Sergei Sreda marked a visit to Wagner’s Ukraine headquarters last week by posing alongside mercenaries in full combat gear.

But Sreda may have condemned the men to death – giving away the base’s location in the occupied city of Popasna after inadvertently photographing a street sign that contained the address of a nearby bomb shelter.

That was all experts needed to locate the base, which Ukraine then used to launch a HIMARS strike. Confirmation that it had been struck came on Sunday, when Telegram channels with links to Wagner began posting photos of the aftermath – including soldiers being carried away on stretchers.

It is just the latest embarrassing blunder for Vladimir Putin’s forces almost six months into what was supposed to be a days-long war in Ukraine – having been forced to retreat from Kyiv, seen the Black Sea flagship Moskva sunk, withdrawn from Snake Island, and more recently Crimea attacked for the first time.   

Meanwhile, Pavlo Kyrylenko – the governor of the eastern Donetsk region – which has seen some of the fiercest fighting, said two civilians were killed and seven were wounded in shelling by Russian forces in the past 24 hours.

The Ukrainian government has ordered mass evacuations in Donetsk but for one couple on a small farm near the city of Kramatorsk leaving is not an option.

‘Grandmother cannot be transported â she is almost 100 years old,’ Nataliia Ataiantz, 47, said as she checked on the elderly woman.

For her husband, Oleksandr, the idea of leaving is ‘scary’.

‘Our parents are buried here. And this is our land too … where should we go, to foreign country?’ he said.

The war has caused millions to flee, killed thousands and deepened a geopolitical rift between the West and Russia, which calls its invasion a ‘special military operation’ to demilitarise its neighbour and protect Russian-speaking communities.

Ukraine, which was part of the Russian-dominated Soviet Union until its 1991 break-up, accuses Russia of waging an imperial-style war of conquest.

Russia faced an initial flurry of U.N. denunciations for attacking Ukraine. But wary of growing frustration and with no prospect of the United Nations being able to end the war, some Western diplomats have acknowledged they are limited in how they can significantly further target Russia.

There was further progress on a U.N.-brokered deal for Ukrainian grain exports to resume, after a Russian blockade of Black Sea ports had worsened a global food crisis.

With ports unblocked, the ship Brave Commander left the Ukrainian port of Pivdennyi carrying the first cargo of food aid bound for Africa from Ukraine since Russia’s invasion.

The first ship to leave under the July deal, the Sierra Leone-flagged Razoni, docked in the Syrian port city of Tartous.

Ukraine can export 3 million tonnes of grain from its ports in September and may eventually be able to export 4 million tonnes monthly, a government official said.

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres will visit Odesa, Ukraine’s main Black Sea port, on Friday. He will meet Zelensky and President Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, which helped engineer the grain accord, a U.N. spokesman said.