Vladimir Putins parade humiliating as tanks now serve Ukraine, expert says

Vladimir Putin’s Victory Day Parade was a little underwhelming this year because the tanks that would normally have been there are “sitting in pieces in the Ukrainian countryside.”

A researcher explained to the Daily Star that while Russia’s tank stockpile is “truly massive” much of this is Cold War era and as losses of more modern tanks mount up, these older models have been called into service.

To make Putin’s headache even worse, a lot of those stockpile tanks aren’t actually in good working order.

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The analyst explained: “Russian units that would normally be participating in the parade are either sitting in pieces in the Ukrainian countryside, still in Russian service waiting for the coming Ukrainian counteroffensive, or my personal favourite, now in service with the Ukrainian army.

“Granted there are some odd outliers, the current small Russian stock of preproduction T-14s weren’t present, and those have effectively been parade vehicles for years now.”

They continued: “Russia has a truly massive stockpile of Cold War-era armor in long term storage, and they have been drawing upon those vehicles to replace losses.”

However: “A huge portion of the tanks that were sitting around in those reserve stockpiles were actually only good on paper.

“Many had been stripped off the books for parts, or even the scrap value (or they were just stolen by civilians).”

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