Historical Camouflages – Ukraine

Commanders!

As we already announced, the next Contract will feature the Ukrainian T-64BV Main Battle Tank. But contracts do feature other prizes as well, which are available for completing Contract Missions. And this time, the prizes will be five Ukrainian camouflages.

Let’s start with the basic Ukrainian digital camouflage (Model 2015). Before 2014 and the conflict that rose therefrom, Ukraine was largely using camouflages similar to Russia. The reason for it is that both countries’ military came from Soviet roots (in this case the Soviet camouflage manuals). After the political changes that followed the events of 2014 and the subsequent conflict in Donbas, Ukraine’s military started looking more towards the West, eager to shed its Soviet legacy.

One aspect of these changes was the adoption of a digital camouflage consisting of green background with black and yellow “digital” squares (their side being roughly 10cm wide) that, at close distances, break the silhouette of vehicles while, at long distances, they create the same effect as a classic “spot” camouflage. This pattern likely first appeared in public during the Day of the Defender of Ukraine parade in Kiev on October 15, 2015.

Despite being visually attractive, the first pattern didn’t work quite as well as many hoped, which is why, in 2016, it was replaced by the Ukrainian digital camouflage (Model 2016). This pattern made the black and yellow zones a bit more sparse and added a new color – brown.

This pattern apparently was more successful and remains in service to this day. Most Ukrainian vehicles bear this camouflage.

The final iteration of the camouflage came five years later. The Ukrainian digital camouflage (Model 2021) was shown to the public on August 24, 2021 during the Day of Independence of Ukraine military parade in Kiev.

This pattern seems denser with three shades of green and light yellow color being present. A number of modern Ukrainian armored vehicles were painted with it but with the war less than six months away at that point, Ukraine likely never had the chance to truly deploy it en masse.

Aside from these three, we have two other interesting camouflages for you. The first one is the rather interesting ZhBTZ camouflage.

This is not a real combat camouflage, it’s a factory paint job pattern created by the Zhitomir Armor Plant (Zhitomirskiy Bronetankovyi Zavod, ZhBTZ in short) in order to promote their prototypes and production vehicles such as various BMP-1 upgrades (such as the BMP-1U Shkval). The camouflage likely first appeared in the September of 2015 at a military expo in Kiev.

The final camouflage we call Ukrainian (Stripes). This is a variant of an older Soviet pattern (in desert colors) that most notably appeared on various T-64-based prototypes such as the BMPT-64. This camouflage was first noticed roughly around 2007 but has since appeared on numerous vehicles.

And that’s what we have for you in this contract. We hope that you’ll enjoy these camouflages and, as always:

See you on the battlefield!