Ukraine: Vlad the invader (not)

By Richard North - February 21, 2022

No doubt much to the chagrin of president Biden and his now bestest friend Johnson, Uncle Vlad has resolutely refused to invade Ukraine, despite the best attempts of secretary of state Blinken to convince us that the Slavic hordes are just waiting for the word to come pouring over the border.

Whether from a Machiavellian sense of humour or a cynical attempt to ramp up the tension, Vlad the sometime invader (or not) has let it be announced (from Minsk) that the joint Russian-Belarus military exercises will continue.

Predictably, this has strengthened Western fears that the areas north of the Ukrainian border will be used as a jump-off point for an attack on Kiev, using the 30,000 or so Russian troops said to be present in Belarus for the exercises.

One might incidentally recall that the last time the Russians took Kiev (in 1943 on the second attempt), they deployed 730,000 troops – laying down 26 bridges in order to cross the Dnieper and encircle the city, with the additional assistance of 87 ferries. The fighting extended from the 3 November to 22 December, and cost 118,000 Soviet casualties.

Nevertheless, the announcement that Russian troops are to continue enjoying the hospitality of their Belarusian hosts has given multiple newspapers the opportunity to re-use photographs of the Saturday exercises at the Obuz-Lesnovsky training ground, in western Belarus.

Helpfully, the Mail published a larger photograph of one tank (pictured above), which has enabled me to get a better look at it. Described by the paper as a T-72B, if that is the correct designation then it describes a variant that first entered production in 1985. But if one enters the land of the super-nerd, close inspection of the road wheels shows that the first two each have eight coupling bolts (joining the second, inner wheels), while the remaining wheels have six each.

The significance of this is that the reduced bolt modification came in with the adoption of the B-variant, previous earlier models being fitted with eight-bolt wheels. An already aged tank has evidently been fitted with cannibalised parts from an earlier model, to keep it running.

In this larger picture, the turret detail is clearer, showing a clear absence of reactive armour blocks on the roof. A T-72B3 will have over 30 – with some nearer forty. On the visible side, we can only see two blocks, to the rear of the gun, just before the smoke mortars. The two stowage bins are unarmoured and, in later models are replaced by reactive armour blocks and cage armour (to the rear).

The lack of reactive armour together with the lack of skirts (which also have reactive armour) – common to all the tanks visible – most decidedly render the vehicles extremely vulnerable to anti-tank weapons, to the extent that they would not be committed to battle.

In fact, these appear to be training tanks, kept specifically at the training ground for troops drafted in to practice and develop their skills. The British Army used to do exactly the same at its leased Batus training ground in central Canada, keeping a number of distinctly battered Challenger IIs for visiting soldiers to play with.

In respect of these particular exercises, the Saturday event was staged partly for the benefit of visiting foreign dignitaries and the media, yet has been taken as “evidence” of Russian war-making potential, and its ability to invade Ukraine. I remain fairly convinced, incidentally, that these are Belarusian Army tanks – the colour scheme is a closer fit.

But it is the willingness of the media, uncritically, endlessly to publish such photographs – without having the first idea of the implications of the scenes portrayed or the context – which helps fuel the ongoing tension, not least because many politicians, including ministers, take their information from the popular media.

A further insight into what we are really dealing with comes in this article, published on the “Radio Free Europe” website, headed: “‘They Drink A Lot, Sell Their Fuel’: Belarusians Give Low Marks To Russian Troops Deployed For Drills”.

This conveys a picture all too familiar to those who have looked closely at the state of the Russian Army, recording the behaviour of troops temporarily stationed in the Belarusian town of Khoyniki, close to the Ukraine border, just north of the Chernobyl exclusion area.

As equipment has been unloaded, it is “frequently dropped” from the platforms, we are told. “After unloading, a lot of abandoned equipment – body armour, helmets, personal gear – remained”.

Troops left the rail lines littered with trash: “Over a stretch of 3 kilometres there were 100-litre trash bags every 20 meters, as well vodka bottles, empty plastic beer kegs, and empty cookie packages”, the Telegram channel reported.

An anonymous commenter responded acerbically that the state railway would just arrange an “emergency” Saturday working day and “the railway workers will clean up everything after our ‘brothers'”.

More criticism has emerged on social media – some of it recorded on yesterday’s comments, pointing to elements of the Russian forces that are poorly disciplined, badly led and unmotivated.

Given the amount of geriatric equipment, and quite obvious supply problems (with complaints of lack of food), this is not a “modern lethal machine” that the Telegraph would have us believe. But when the media is impressed with 35-year old, cannibalised training tanks, the Western propagandists have a very easy time of it, talking up the scale of the threat.

Needless to say, the Russians have been out in force, repeatedly denying that there is any intention to invade Ukraine. That task fell this weekend to the Russian ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov who told CBS: “There are no such plans”. He was later to complain that his pre-recorded interview was “abridged” before it was aired.

But the Russian ambassador and his compatriots get support from an unlikely source, the Kiev-based Centre for Defence Strategies.

Updating their previous report, which we recorded earlier, they keep to their view that the “full-scale invasion” scenario by the Russian Federation remains “unlikely” – contrary to the assertions of Biden and Johnson.

This is based on the Centre’s assessment of the balance of capabilities and resources of the Russian Federation’s battle groups massed near the borders as well as the Ukraine Armed Force’s defence potential. However, they do concede that threat of incursions in regional areas remains high, and escalation in eastern Ukraine remains highly likely.

This has not stopped social media “trainspotters” raising the alarums with endless pictures of “green kit” swanning around the countryside, the latest “scare” being convoys of Russian vehicles with the letter “z” daubed on them, as an apparent identification mark. Ironically, the vehicle pictured is a Gaz 66, which was first produced in 1964 and went out of production in 1999.

Macron, however, is on the job, proposing a summit between Biden and Uncle Vlad. Moreover, both leaders had accepted “the principle” of such a meeting, to be held on the condition that Russia does not invade Ukraine. It can surely only be a matter of time before Putin abandons his attempt to emulate Zorro’s famous trademark.

Johnson has already missed a trick though, failing to come back from Munich waving a piece of paper and declaring “peace in our time” – not that anyone would believe him. But if he’s going to fix his place in the history books as saviour of the known universe – protecting us from clapped-out tanks and dodgy soldiery – he’d better find a way to upstage Macron.