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You Can Buy This Rare Czech Tank That’s Fighting for Both Ukraine and Russia
Given Ukraine’s and Russia’s close ties during the Soviet era, it’s no surprise that the two nations use much of the same equipment — Western support notwithstanding.
But a relative oddity has shown up on the Ukrainian battlefield on both sides: the 46-ton Czech VT-72B Armored Recovery Vehicle (ARV).
Built on the Russian T-72 tank chassis, the VT-72B was manufactured by former Czechoslovakia in 1989 and delivered to the Czechoslovak People’s Army and other Warsaw Pact members.
Production quickly ended just a few years later when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 making these ARVs quite rare.
East Germany and India both ended up with a handful of the ARVs, as well as the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
And apparently, both Ukraine and Russia got their hands on some also because the ARV has now appeared in Ukraine.
Ukraine likely received theirs directly from the Czech Republic sometime after 2014. As for Russia, their VT-72B’s are a little more of a mystery. According to Ukraine War analyst David Axe, 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…
