Does a viral video show an Israeli tank destroyed "by the resistance's fire" in Lebanon in October 2024? No, that's not true: The claim recycled footage of a Russian tank in Ukraine that emerged on social media nearly a year before the start of Israel's September 30, 2024, ground operation in Lebanon. Ukrainian media initially posted the footage on October 8, 2023. A Ukrainian senior military posted similar footage on the same date. These sources identified the tank, a Russian-made T-90 model, as part of the Russian military's forces in Ukraine.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, on October 2, 2024. It included footage of a tank explosion and a text description. The description said:
The first Zionist tank tried to enter Lebanon and was evaporated by the resistance's fire...
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
commander
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Oct 3 15:07:42 2024 UTC)
The 6-second video showed a tank that burst into flames in what appeared to be a large field.
The video predates the 2024 Israel's ground operation in Lebanon
Israel said that it launched a ground offensive against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon on September 30, 2024 (archived here).
However, a reverse image search revealed that the footage in question started to circulate online almost a year earlier -- on October 8, 2023.
On that day, a longer, better-quality version of the video was posted by a Ukrainian Telegram channel, OperativnoZSU (archived here), and reposted on YouTube by the state-funded Ukrainian national news agency Ukrinform (archived here) under the title:
Т-90 «Прорив» - момент знищення.
As translated by DeepL (archived here), it read:
T-90 "Breakthrough" - the moment of destruction.
The T-90 "Breakthrough" (archived and subscription-free version here) refers to a Russian-manufactured tank deployed by the Russian army in Ukraine. In particular, Russia has used it in attacks on the southern and southeastern Ukrainian regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, the state-run Russian news agency TASS reported in 2023.
Though Russia does export the tanks, a Google search (archived here) for references to the T-90 tank on the website of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) revealed, via Google Translate, that the IDF mentioned the tank only within the context of Russia.
While there have been reports (archived here) about the Ukrainian armed forces capturing some of Russia's T-90s and reusing (archived here) them on the battlefield against Russia, a closer look at the video does not show any markings on the tank's surface that could have indicated that it belonged to Ukraine at the moment of explosion.
Here is the keyframe breakdown of the earliest version of the footage (click to view larger):
(Source: Invid screenshot taken on Thu Oct 3 14:51:42 2024 UTC)
The Telegraph (archived here), a British daily, reposted the video on its YouTube channel on October 9, 2023. It added that it was filmed in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region.
(Video from The Telegraph's YouTube channel embedded on Fri Oct 4 at 01:00:00 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories could not find the video that The Telegraph credited to Ukrainian General Oleksandr Syrskyy on his Telegram channel. However, on October 8, 2023, the channel posted a similar clip (archived here), shot from a wider angle and from above. At the time of this post, Syrskyy, who is now the top commander of Ukraine's overall armed forces (archived here), was the commander of Ukraine's ground forces. In his description of the clip, Syrskyy mentioned the destruction of 25 Russian tanks, including a T-90.
The relevant excerpt from the description said:
Рота ПТРК з 66-ї ОМБр на Лиманському напрямку знищила за 4 дні 25 танків росіян.
Серед них - Т-90.
As translated by DeepL (archived here), this excerpt read:
A company of ATGMs from the 66th Brigade in the Liman sector destroyed 25 Russian tanks in 4 days.
Among them was a T-90.
The footage was claimed to show an Israeli tank before
On October 9, 2023, Charter 97, a Belarusian news outlet that operates outside of Belarus, reported (archived here) that some authors (sarcastically termed "military correspondents") of Russian Telegram channels that promote Russian propaganda about the war with Ukraine had claimed that the tank in question was an Israeli tank destroyed by Hamas fighters in Gaza.
At the time, however, Israel hadn't sent tanks to Gaza yet (archived here). It started that ground operation on October 13, 2023 (archived here) -- five days after footage of the Russian tank explosion in Ukraine appeared on Syrskyy's account on Telegram and on Ukrainian media accounts.
In November 2023, the French news agency AFP debunked the claim that the tank explosion had occurred in Gaza.
The fact checking site Misbar also has reviewed the claim that is the focus of this fact check.
Other Lead Stories fact checks mentioning Lebanon are here. Our fact checks about the Hamas-Israel war can be found here; fact checks about the Russia-Ukraine war are here.
