Ukrainian soldiers are refurbishing abandoned Russian tanks and trucks

KYIV, Ukraine — It was an early and delightful symbol of underdog resistance. Dubbed the “John Deere Brigade,” Ukrainian tractors were shown all over social media lugging away hastily abandoned Russian military equipment, from tanks to self-propelled artillery systems to complicated air defense platforms, worth tens of millions of dollars. Western predictions that Ukraine would fall to its invaders in as little as three days proved wildly off base. The breadbasket of Europe could punch above its weight. And now it was in the repo business.

Around the time of the Battle of Kyiv, captured Russian vehicles were generally just given a quick coat of paint and liberally decked out with Ukrainian flags before being sent back out to fight their previous owners. But what was at first an organic and ad hoc tractor effort by Ukrainian farmers has transformed into something far more organized and systematic, as the Ukrainian military have pushed vast quantities of captured Russian armor into frontline service. And since Ukraine retook almost all of Kharkiv district in the last week, there has been a windfall of new vehicles to “MacGyver” and repurpose.

In the aftermath of Ukraine’s successful Kharkiv offensive over the past week, fleets of Russian armored vehicles were left abandoned on the battlefield, left behind by Russian troops as they desperately tried to escape the Ukrainian advance. Footage uploaded to social media by victorious Ukrainian troops showed rows of BMP infantry fighting vehicles, neatly parked in the liberated city of Izium, seemingly in near-perfect condition, while T-80U tanks from Russia’s elite Fourth Guards Tank Regiment were left abandoned at a maintenance station, in various states of repair.

According to the independent monitor Oryx, which uses publicly available footage to visually confirm Russian and Ukrainian equipment losses, the Ukrainians have captured a minimum of 1,841 pieces of heavy Russian military equipment since the start of the war, including 356 tanks, 606 armored fighting vehicles, and 363 trucks and jeeps. As Oryx only includes equipment that has been visually confirmed as captured, the true total is probably much higher.

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“During the early days of the war, a lot of Russian vehicles totally ran out of gas and were abandoned in perfect condition,” said Yuri Matsarsky, a soldier in Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces (TDF), the nation’s military reserve. “That’s happening less in the last few months. But after Kharkiv, it’s picked up again.”

The Ukrainians have been repainting these captured vehicles in their now-familiar digital camouflage. They’ve also been upgrading and improving them. Captured “Tornado-U” trucks were given an extra Browning M2 heavy machine gun mounted on the cab, while a BTR-82A armored personnel carrier was upgraded with extra armor, a thermal-imaging sight, and Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet platform.