Did Ukrainian forces use U.S. made tanks in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine prior to Russia's 2022 invasion? No, that's not true: While Ukrainian forces have been battling Russia-backed separatists in Donetsk since 2014, there is no evidence that U.S. tanks were present in Ukraine, let alone deployed to the battlefield prior to 2022. Tanks pledged by the U.S. to Ukraine in January 2023 are expected to arrive in country in autumn of 2023.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok on April 28, 2023. It shows a voxpop interview (subtitled in Hungarian and translated by Lead Stories) in which a Russian-speaking woman tells a reporter that she blames Ukraine, not Russia, for the conflict that broke out in February 2022. The reporter asks, "Ukraine attacked itself?" The woman responds, "Whose people are in the Donetsk basin? Whose people are there?" and begins to walk away. The reporter importunes, "But what kind of tanks did Ukraine use to attack its own people? Perhaps Russian?" The woman retorts, "American."
The person who posted the video to TikTok commented:
"A Ukrainian woman speaks the truth, which the media is not showing 🤯"
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed May 3 12:18:13 2023 UTC)
According to a February 2023 report by the U.S. Congressional Research Service (CRS):
"After Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, the Obama Administration provided Ukraine nonlethal security assistance, including body armor, helmets, vehicles, night and thermal vision devices, heavy engineering equipment... and other related items. In 2017, the Trump Administration announced U.S. readiness to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine."
U.S. weapons received by Ukraine before Russia's 2022 invasion included sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, the CRS report said. Tanks were not included the security-assistance packages.
In January 2023, the White House announced plans to send Ukraine 31 M1 Abrams tanks. The U.S. Department of Defense does not expect these tanks to be deployed inside Ukraine before the autumn of 2023.
