The T-72AM Is What You Get After Slapping Fresh Paint On a 50-Year-Old T-72A
1,000 1970s-vintage T-72As are beginning to reach Russian regiments
This story was commissioned by Euromaidan Press. Since Substack pays only around a fifth of my bills, I have no choice but to take on a lot of freelance work. I still want my Substack audience to know where to read those freelance stories, however. Hence this excerpt.
Late last year, the Kremlin began pulling as many as a thousand 1970s-vintage T-72A tanks out of deep reserve and lining them for modernization. This week, we caught our first glimpse of these very old, but freshly upgraded, Russian tanks in active service. Meet the T-72AM.
Their appearance is significant for two reasons. It’s evidence Russia is now digging deep enough into Soviet-era storage to bring 50-year-old tanks to the front. And it’s a test of whether tanks that old, with armor that thin, can survive a battlefield that already kills the new ones.
Video of the 46-ton, three-person T-72AM in service with the 1442nd Guards Motor Rifle Regiment recently appeared online. The 1442nd Guards Motor Rifle Regiment is deployed just east of the city of Kostiantynivka in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast.
Kostiantynivka is arguably the main focus of Russia’s spring offensive. To march on the free cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk from the south, the Russians may first need to advance through Kostiantynivka.
Read the rest at Euromaidan Press.