STRINGER/REUTERS
Russian state-run media has released a video of troops driving a captured US-made armored vehicle in Ukraine — flying both Russian and American flags in an unusual bit of propaganda.
The footage, published Monday by RT, shows what appears to be a US M113 armored personnel carrier operating near the front lines in Zaporizhzhia. RT said the APC was “captured” from Ukrainian forces.
The broadcaster suggested that a US vehicle flying a Russian and American flag into combat against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy could be a “sign of the times.”
The US Department of Defense has sent over 900 M113s to Kyiv since Russia’s invasion in February 2022. However, according to the open-source intelligence site Oryx, which tracks equipment losses on both sides of the war, at least 397 of these combat vehicles, made by American company FMC Corporation, have been destroyed, damaged, abandoned, or captured by Russia. Official figures on combat losses are unavailable.
Business Insider could not independently verify the video shared by Russian media.
The video footage comes three days after President Donald Trump hosted his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Alaska for negotiations aimed at stopping Moscow’s invasion. Ending the three-and-a-half-year conflict has proven to be an elusive foreign policy goal for the White House.
While the Alaska summit did not yield any immediate, tangible results, at least not publicly, Russia has sought to frame the meeting — Putin’s first visit to the US since 2015 — as the end of the international isolation brought on by its brutal invasion.
Dan Rice, a former US Army officer and special advisor to Ukraine’s military leadership, said the Russian information space “is working overtime” to frame the summit as a major victory for reestablishing normal relations with the US.
“It’s not,” Rice, now the president of the American University Kyiv, told Business Insider. “It’s the US attempting to end a war started by a madman with nuclear weapons. The US and the West will never be normalized again with Putin.”
Ukrainian government agencies and officials said that the RT footage underscores Russia’s attitude toward the peace talks.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
The Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security wrote on social media that Russia was “further trolling peace efforts by placing American flags alongside Russian flags on their meat assault wagons yesterday in Mala Tokmachka,” a small village in Zaporizhzhia.
Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said that “Russian propagandists are showing a video in which Russian equipment is storming with the flags of Russia and the USA.”
“In fact, the Russians are using the symbolism of the United States in their own terrorist, aggressive war with the killing of civilians,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app, according to a translation of his remarks. “Maximum audacity.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump is set to host a war-weary Zelenskyy and other European leaders at the White House on Monday for a high-stakes engagement that the US president hopes will pave the way for a trilateral meeting with his Ukrainian and Russian counterparts.
It remains unclear what — if any — concessions Zelenskyy will agree to in Washington. On Sunday, Trump previewed the big meeting by suggesting Ukraine give up its efforts to retake Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, and walk away from its aspirations to join NATO.
Both of these critical concessions would likely be welcomed developments in Russia. Trump officials have also hinted at major land swaps and security guarantees for Ukraine as part of the peace process. Ukraine has repeatedly sought security guarantees while rejecting calls to relinquish territory.
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