Commanders!
In addition to the Soviet forest camouflage, a title and a new base paint, we’ve prepared one more item for this year’s upcoming Defender of the Fatherland celebrations – the Defender skin for the T-72B Main Battle Tank.
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Despite the skin’s name, which is more related to the event than the actual vehicle, this skin is in fact based on an existing Main Battle Tank. The history behind it is pretty murky though. It apparently took part in the 2015 Battle of Debaltseve between the Ukrainian Army and various separatist forces. The battle, which took place between January 14 and February 20, 2015, resulted in a major defeat of the Ukrainian military and was one of the more important milestones on the road to the current frozen conflict status quo.
The T-72B tank in question was painted with a basic khaki color, but bore no official military markings. The base color was covered by splashed of brushed white paint, covering much of the vehicle. The tank is also fitted with a commander’s cupola shield, which we have also added to the model.
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The tank was an earlier T-72B variant with Kontakt-1 armor (as the ERA layout suggests), which is a strange vehicle to be seen in the hands of the separatists, because Ukraine does not operate this model – Ukrainian T-72s are mostly T-72A’s with roughly one third of them fitted with the same ERA (T-72AV).
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How it got there and who’s manning it is anyone’s guess – various Ukrainian sources stated that the tank belonged to the infamous Vagner PMC, a mercenary unit with strong ties to the Russian government. The Vagner PMC consists mostly of Russian military veterans and is sent all across the world to the places Russia doesn’t want to be directly connected with. Its troops were spotted in Syria and are currently rumored to be operating in Libya in support of Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army.
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Regardless of the tank’s origin, we believe it will make for a great-looking skin, especially for various winter maps. We hope that you will enjoy this skin as much as we enjoyed creating it for you and, as always:
See you on the battlefield!
