Ukrainian tank single handedly destroys massive Russian convoy east of Kyiv

INCREDIBLE drone footage shows the moment a massive Russian convoy was attacked by a single Ukrainian tank.

Footage captured by a Ukrainian military drone shows a Ukrainian tank carrying out an ambush on a Russian column as it moved through Nova Basan, east of Kyiv, which was recaptured by Ukrainian forces on April 1.

Much of the battle to retake the town took place on March 31 and involved members of the Dmytro Korchynsky Brotherhood Battalion, or the Bratstvo (Brotherhood) Battalion, which released this footage on Wednesday with Russian and Ukrainian flag images added over the vehicles. At least eight vehicles are marked Russian and just one is marked Ukrainian.

Following the attack, images of damaged and burned-out Russian vehicles littering the town were posted online by residents, photographers travelling with the Bratstvo Battalion, and by Ukrainian reporters who visited Nova Basan after the Russian withdrawal.

The Bratstvo Battalion was formed on February 24 by Dmytro Korchynsky, a fringe political figure and writer based in Kyiv. His Bratstvo political party has been described as an ultranationalist Orthodox Christian organization, according to a profile published by The Intercept in 2015. In a video announcing the formation of the battalion, Korchynsky said it was accepting recruits “to participate in the defense of Ukraine.”

Travelling with Bratstvo Battalion was Oleksiy Seredyuk, an activist running Korchynsky’s online media arm, World Bratstvo TV, and who was documenting the battalion’s activities.

On March 31, Seredyuk posted a video of troops being welcomed by residents of Nova Basan as they entered the town on foot. Walking alongside Seredyuk in that video, and several others he has posted on social media during the conflict, was Vita Zavirukha, an ultranationalist female soldier known in Ukraine for her high-profile involvement in neo-Nazi groups.

Zavirukha gained notoriety in 2016 she was tried for involvement in the killing of three police officers.

The conflict in Ukraine, also known as the War in Donbass, is a ongoing conflict in the easternmost region of Ukraine. It started in 2014, after a series of protests in the Ukrainian capital Kiev known as the Euromaidan Revolution, led to the ousting of the Ukrainian President and a shift towards closer ties with the West. This was met with resistance from pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass region, who declared independence and sparked a conflict with the Ukrainian government.

Since then, fighting between Ukrainian government forces and the pro-Russian separatists has claimed thousands of lives and displaced over a million people. Efforts to bring an end to the conflict, including several ceasefires and peace negotiations, have so far been unsuccessful in bringing a lasting solution. The conflict remains a complex and sensitive issue, with both sides blaming each other for the violence and the international community divided on how to resolve the crisis.