Ivan Nechepurenko reported in yesterday’s New York Times that a shipment of thirty T-34-85 battle tanks is wending its way on the Trans-Siberian Railway from Vladivostok to a Russian military base in Moscow. Although the tanks are real, they aren’t for use in war: they’re props to be used in Russian propaganda.
Although obsolete now, the T-34 tank holds a legendary place in Soviet history. Perhaps the most influential battle tank design ever, it was first produced in 1940, in time for the colossal struggle with Nazi Germany that ended with a Soviet victory banner raised on the Reichstag at the end of World War II.
Every year on May 9 at least one T-34 appears in the massive Victory Parade in Moscow’s Red Square. But Russia has a nostalgia problem: its WWII-era T-34s have just about worn out. So Russia is importing 30 of them from Laos for use in military parades and in movies, like the state-funded war movie T-34 that is breaking box-office records in Russia this month.
Why Laos? During the cold war, Laos was in the Soviet orbit and bought T-34s from Warsaw Pact member Czechoslovakia, which was still producing replicas of these WWII tanks in the 1950s. Laos doesn’t need these obsolete tanks any more, so they’re sending them to Russia, presumably as part of a trade for the several dozen upgraded T-72B1 tanks that Laos got from Russia last month.
Putin may be getting these obsolete T-34s partly to distract Russians from the fact that Russia is having trouble building its latest tanks. In 2015 Russia unveiled the T-14 Armata main battle tank, which has automatic loading, reactive armor, and an unmanned turret — fancy new features that Russia said would make the T-14 an unstoppable killer of NATO tanks. Russia also said it would field 2,300 T-14s by 2025. However, currently fewer than two dozen T-14s are being tested — fewer than the 30 obsolete T-34s that Russia just got from Laos. And no T-14s are operationally deployed yet. It is obvious that Russia won’t have 2,300 of these tanks fielded on schedule, if ever.
Incompetence and a policy of distraction — where have we seen that before?