When Russia runs out of museum-grade tanks, is it going to send in the cavalry?
A trainload of obsolete, museum-grade T-54 tanks was spotted on a transport train heading west from a Russian military repair base, news reports said on Thursday.
Still images and videos geolocated to Russia’s far-eastern Primorsky region showed at least 14 outdated combat vehicles aboard flatcars rolling past a rail crossing. Screen grabs by the Georgia-based Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) showed some clearly identifiable as the T-54B model.
The shipment most likely departed from the 1295th Central Tank Repair and Storage Base in the town Arsenyev, according to news reports first appearing in independent Russian web media then followed by Ukrainian news platforms and international analytical groups.
Russia has presumably taken the tanks out of storage in an attempt to beef up its forces in Ukraine, CIT said: “Our team has at its disposal photographs of a train carrying T-54 tanks of the middle of the 20th century from Primorsky Krai to the west. We see this as a sign of a shortage of armored vehicles in the RF Armed Force.” [Continue reading…]