The Kremlin media report on the great success of the Russian sabotage group near Kherson: the Leopard tank was disabled (what modification is not indicated). RIA Novosti publishes a video in which an officer of the Sokol volunteer battalionsays :
“Here, the shelling of two posts from Leopard tanks was repeatedly recorded. The Leopard tank was observed. There is a story from those colleagues, we communicate with them: a sabotage detachment captured a Leopard tank, they could not drag it to the rear, they took it and sank it in a swamp. This fact is already there. Leopard is here, they are already visiting.
According to RIA, this happened in the direction of Kherson. This story is retold by Vesti, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Moskovsky Komsomolets, Arguments and Facts, Izvestia, Lenta.ru, Regnum and many others.
But the authors of this story, it seems, did not take into account one detail: the front line near Kherson runs along the Dnieper. The right bank is under the control of Ukraine, the left – by Russia.
On Ukrainian websites, you can find a lot of joking questions about where in the arid steppes of the Kherson region, Russian saboteurs found a swamp in which they could drown a tank they had stolen. Strictly speaking, there are swamps near Kherson – in the Dnieper delta. On the local portal "My city – Kherson" in the section "Reservoirs of the Kherson region" we read :
“Bogs are areas of the earth's surface with excessive moisture, on which specific moisture-loving vegetation grows, a swamp type of soil formation develops and peat accumulates, occupy 31.8 thousand hectares within the Kherson region. This is 0.11% of the territory – more than in other areas of the steppe zone (0.05%). The swamps are located mainly in the Belozersk, Tsyurupinsk and Golopristan districts. Peat bogs were formed as a result of swamping of reservoirs in the lower reaches of the Dnieper River, as well as the floodplains of many of its branches and some tributaries, mainly in the lower left bank. These are exclusively low-lying swamps. The largest array is the Kardashinsky swamp with an average peat depth of up to 1.25 m and a maximum of 4.5 m.
But the Kardashinsky swamp, like the Golopristansky and Tsyurupinsky districts, are located on the Russian-controlled left bank of the Dnieper. If we assume that the tank was sunk there, then it turns out that either the Ukrainian Armed Forces crossed the Dnieper and entrenched themselves on the left bank, but the Ukrainian media are silent about this for some reason, or Russian saboteurs penetrated the right bank, hijacked the tank, somehow transported it to the left bank, but for some reason they could not drag it further and drowned in a swamp.
On some maps, however, you can also find a swampy area on the right bank – on the outskirts of the city of Kherson, in the Ship District.
But the Kherson information portal indicates that the swampy floodplains there were drained back in Soviet times and a residential area was built in their place. So it remains a mystery where the saboteurs managed to drown the tank. For some reason, they do not show photos of their trophy.
