A photo of a train loaded with the T-80 (T-80U, to be precise) tanks was uploaded to Twitter on July, 25, 2015. Those tanks had an indicative ‘Kontakt-5’ explosive reactive armor attached. The photo has a description text: “Saratov [Russia] train station – a train of tanks”.
It’s noteworthy that the same kind of T-80 tanks with ‘Kontakt’ armor started to be shipped to the Ukrainian armed forces from a Kharkov engineering plant after the repair and modernization activities:
– The Ukrainian army got the first unique T-80 tanks (in Russian)
– T-80 tanks which will be shipped to the front line till the end of the month are repaired in Kharkov (in Russian)
Taking into account the information above, we can assume that the Russian invaders are preparing a new operation of T-80 tanks transferring to the ‘Novorossiya’ militants where they will be claimed as the ‘captured’ ones.
The alike case happened the last year when the Russians moved the T-64 tanks to Donbas. Those tanks had been removed from the Russian army inventory and written off from the storage bases. Later militants said that the tanks were the war booties abandoned by the Ukrainian servicemen:
– ‘Truckers-2’ — Motorists of the Southern Military Command
– ‘Truckers’ from ‘Rublevka’ – 147th Automotive Logistic Support Battalion
– Transportation. Multi-Discipline Experts (in Russian)
– ‘Donetsk Express’ – Identification of Russian Inventory Moved to Donbas (in Russian)
– Russian Inventory Transportation Workflow: How Do They Do It? (in Russian)
Original article by Mihail Net translated by Oleksandr Klymenko