Since widening their war on Ukraine in February 2022, the Russians have lost around 300 engineering vehicles that independent analysts can confirm. That the Russians are activating every old ARV they can locate at some Siberian vehicle park should come as no surprise. It wasn’t widely known that the Russian army had VT-72Bs until one of the aging ARVs appeared alongside some other old combat vehicles on a Russian train, bound for Ukraine, in a video that circulated online on Wednesday.
The Russian army operates a wide array of recovery vehicles-hundreds of them-based on tank and fighting-vehicle chassis. It’s much less clear how Russia got VT-72Bs. It seems the Czech Republic supplied a few VT-72Bs to Ukraine around 2014, the year Russia first invaded Ukraine. It wasn’t until weeks later that the Ukrainians had advanced far enough past the minefield that the engineers in the Bergepanzers could begin their recovery work.īoth the Czech Republic and Slovakia, as NATO members, are supporters of a free Ukraine and have provided combat vehicles to Kyiv’s army. The brigade left behind more than two dozen of its best vehicles. Recovering irreplaceable ex-German Leopard 2A6 tanks, ex-Finnish Leopard 2R mineclearers and ex-American M-2 fighting vehicles, Ukrainian Bergepanzers have helped to mitigate the cost of a disastrous attempt by the Ukrainian army’s 47th Brigade to cross a Russian minefield in southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Oblast on June 8.
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