Vladimir Putin has proudly displayed a selection of American and British tanks in Moscow after they were captured on the frontline in Ukraine.
A British Saxon armoured personnel carrier, believed to have been given to Ukraine in 2015, was among vehicles pictured parked in the Russian capital under red banners boasting “Our victory is inevitable”.
The display is part of a month-long exhibition, which also features an American Bradley tank, a Swedish CV90 and a French-made AMX-10RC armoured fighting vehicle.
The Russian president also plans to parade the armoured vehicles, some displaying British and US flags, to glorify the invasion of Ukraine.
The exhibition will run alongside Moscow’s Red Square Victory Day Parade on May 9 to celebrate Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two.
It will also feature an American Bradley tank, a Swedish CV90 and a French-made AMX-10RC armoured fighting vehicle.
Putin used May 9 last year to launch into a fiery 10-minute speech in front of the Kremlin, thundering against “Western global elites” and claiming civilisation was at “a decisive turning point”.
The holiday commemorating the Soviet victory in World War Two is the most important day in the calendar in Russia under Putin, who casts his invasion of Ukraine as analogous to Russia’s fight against the Nazis.
Ukraine, which suffered proportionally greater losses than Russia in World War Two, calls that an abuse of shared history to justify aggression.
It came as Russia lost as many tanks in the Ukraine war as the total number it had in active service across its armed forces before Vladimir Putin launched the invasion.
More than 3,000 tanks have been damaged or destroyed in two years of fighting after Moscow failed in its initial blitzkrieg aimed at capturing the capital, Kyiv.
To make up for the shortfall the Russian millitary has been resupplying the frontline from its strategic reserves of armour while urgently boosting defence spending and putting its economy on a war footing, says the analysis by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
A group of militants attacked a police checkpoint in Russia’s North Caucasus region, killing two officers, officials said Monday.
Four other officers were wounded and all five attackers were killed in the shootout in the Karachay-Cherkessia region late Sunday, according to the regional branch of Russia’s Interior Ministry.
The Investigative Committee, the country’s top state criminal investigation agency, said the same gunmen had raided another police checkpoint in the region a week before, killing two police and injuring another. It didn’t describe the attackers’ affiliation or motive.
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