The ‘turtle tank’ in combat.
Ukrainian defense ministry capture
Russia’s bizarre “turtle tank” died the way it lived: encased in an awkward metal shell that prevented its turret from rotating and surely hindered its mobility.
Just a day or so after the modified T-72 appeared on the front line around Krasnohorivka, just west of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, a Ukrainian drone team spotted the 51-ton, three-person tank sheltering in a hangar in Donetsk’s Petrovs’kyi district.
An apparent Ukrainian artillery barrage targeted the hangar, destroying it and the vehicles inside—including the notorious do-it-yourself up-armored tank.
The strange tank’s brief front-line service tells an important and darkly funny story about battlefield improvisation and security. But the same tragic story—tragic for the Russians, that is—belies the Kremlin’s overall strategy in the 26th month of the wider war. A strategy that’s working, albeit at staggering cost in people and equipment.
The turtle tank apparently was an early-model T-72 with DIY anti-drone armor. Where many crews on both sides of the Russia-Ukraine war add drone-defeating armor to their vehicles in the form of cages or slats, the crew of the turtle tank installed a huge roof that extended out in front of the tank.
The struts supporting the roof prevented the turret from rotating more than a few degrees and also would have complicated any effort to maneuver on forested or urban terrain. Worse, the installation left gaps between the tank and the shell: gaps that were more than wide enough for one of Ukraine’s hundreds of thousands of explosive drones to slip through.
Still, the turtle tank survived its combat debut on Monday. It led a column of armored vehicles on a quick jaunt through Ukrainian fire to drop off infantry near Krasnohorivka, where the Russians are trying to advance as part of their winter-spring offensive.
After the infantry dismounted, the turtle tank pulled a U-turn and returned to its hangar. The problem, for the crew, was that Ukrainian drones were watching—and the turtle tank was, by now, notorious all over the world.
So famous, in fact, that social-media users dug up a video—shot by a Russian soldier, clearly—depicting the turtle tank in its hangar. It was a simple matter for the Ukrainians to track the bizarre tank back to its home base, match that base to the location in the older video and then pass the coordinates along to Ukrainian artillery batteries.
In building one of the weirdest DIY vehicles of the war, the Russians got too famous for their own good. And now the turtle tank is wreckage and its crew possibly dead or wounded.
But don’t mistake the appearance and prompt destruction of one (badly) drone-proofed T-72 as evidence the Russians are losing in Ukraine. The Russian economy is on a war footing, Russian leader Vladimir Putin won his sham re-election in a landslide last month and the Russian military has enough new recruits, draftees, ammunition and old Cold War weaponry to sustain—for at least another year—its war of aggression in Ukraine.
And the Russian strategy of mass over maneuver—that is, overwhelming ammo-starved Ukrainian forces with sheer numbers of troops and tanks—has resulted in the Russians capturing the city of Avdiivka back in February and making further incremental gains in recent weeks and days.
Yes, it’s costing the Russians hundreds of troops and dozens of vehicles every day, including the turtle tank. But it’s not clear anyone in any position of authority in Russia minds losing those people, those vehicles … and the turtle tank.
