Around the time of the Battle of Kiev, captured Russian vehicles were generally just given a quick coat of paint and generously decorated with Ukrainian flags before being sent back to fight their previous owners. But what was initially an organic and ad hoc tractor effort by Ukrainian farmers has turned into something much more organized and systematic as the Ukrainian military has pushed massive amounts of captured Russian tanks to the front lines. And since Ukraine reclaimed almost all of the Kharkiv region in the last week, there has been an unexpected influx of new vehicles to “MacGyver” and repurpose. Russian tanks and self-propelled artillery systems seized by Ukrainian forces are displayed in Independence Square in Kyiv on August 25. (Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images) In the wake of Ukraine’s successful assault on Kharkiv last week, fleets of Russian armored vehicles were abandoned on the battlefield, left behind by Russian troops as they desperately tried to escape the Ukrainian advance. Footage uploaded to social media by victorious Ukrainian troops showed rows of BMP infantry fighting vehicles neatly parked in the liberated city of Izium, seemingly in near-perfect condition, while T-80U tanks from Russia’s elite Fourth Guards Tank Regiment were left abandoned in maintenance station, in various states of repair. According to the independent monitor Oryx, which uses publicly available footage to visually confirm losses of Russian and Ukrainian equipment, the Ukrainians have captured at least 1,841 pieces of heavy Russian military equipment since the start of the war, including 356 tanks, 606 armored fighting vehicles, and 363 trucks and jeeps. As Oryx only includes equipment that has been visually confirmed as captured, the actual total is likely much higher. The story continues “During the first days of the war, many Russian vehicles completely ran out of gas and were abandoned in perfect condition,” said Yuri Matcharsky, a soldier in the Territorial Defense Forces of Ukraine (TDF), the country’s military reserve. “This has happened less in recent months. But after Kharkiv, it has risen again.” The Ukrainians have repainted these captured vehicles with their now familiar digital camouflage. They have also upgraded and improved them. Captured “Tornado-U” trucks received an additional cabin-mounted Browning M2 heavy machine gun, while a BTR-82A armored personnel carrier was upgraded with additional armor, a thermal imaging sight and Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet platform. Young Ukrainians climb over a burnt Russian T-90 tank captured by units of the “South” operational command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. (Viacheslav Onyshchenko/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) “Many of the vehicles we captured were MT-LBs,” Pavlo Kazarin, another soldier in the TDF and a well-known journalist before the war, told Yahoo News, referring to the versatile Russian armored vehicle often used as an armored personnel carrier. or artillery tractors. “At least one of them has been upgraded with additional weapons, such as a ZSU-2 23 anti-aircraft automatic.” In fact, one TDF brigade has an entire garage of Russian armored vehicles, due to what Macharsky described as “special tactics” to immobilize Russian vehicles and force their crews to abandon them. “A TDF fighter team used a light mortar to strafe a Russian BTR armored personnel carrier following a tactical patrol route, deliberately bursting the vehicle’s tires and forcing the crew to abandon it.” “A lot of Russian vehicles left behind don’t have that much damage,” Matcharsky said. “The Russians just don’t have the motivation or the discipline to repair them.” Despite Russia’s inability to match the latest Western advances in drone technology or precision weapons, building durable heavy trucks is always something it has historically done well. And because so many Ukrainians were forced into military service as a result of the war, they initially had to rely on civilian cars for transportation. In general, they had limited off-road capability and no armor, making them extremely vulnerable to Russian attack. One of Macarski’s commanders went through three vehicles in one month due to shelling. Ukrainian soldiers in a tank after Russian forces withdrew from Izium, in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, on Wednesday. (Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images) Thanks to what the Ukrainians have nicknamed the “Russian Lend Lease,” more and more of Kiev’s soldiers are now walking around with bulletproof vests and artillery. This not only translates into fewer casualties but also greater operational viability on the battlefield. Macharsky joked that it is often easier to simply steal a Russian armored vehicle for use by the TDF than to trade or argue with other Ukrainian Army units for an official deployment. The “Tornado-U”, for example, is one of Russia’s last heavy military trucks, and the models captured by the Ukrainians have an armored cab, a 440-horsepower engine and a 6×6 chassis. The Tornado-U can also drive easily off-road and carry a range of towed weapons such as howitzers or anti-tank weapons. The Ukrainians have also pinched other types of Russian kits. A BM-21 “Grad” multiple rocket launcher system was found beyond effective repair, so the Ukrainians salvaged the rocket launcher tubes and mounted them on the backs of the trucks. Although they are old technology (Grad missiles bear little resemblance to the “Katyusha” missiles used by the Soviet Army in World War II), ammunition for such systems is still relatively plentiful, and the missiles remain deadly. However, Ukrainian soldiers insist that refurbished Russian hardware is no substitute for continued support from their Western partners. Russian guns and tanks show a lot of wear and tear. The barrels are worn and the age of the equipment is extremely dated, 30 or 40 years, and sometimes older than that. “Imagine the wonders we could do with a brand new Abrams tank,” Matsarsky said.
