Russian 'rare' armored vehicle abandoned near Avdeevka

BTR-90, a limited-production armored personnel carrier, was abandoned by Russian forces after fighting near the city of Avdeevka.

Members of the 110th Independent Mechanized Brigade of Ukraine on December 11 posted a video of damaged and abandoned Russian equipment after fighting in the area of Krasnohorivka village, near the Avdeevka frontline in Donetsk province, including a BTR-90 armored personnel carrier.

The BTR-90 had its turret ripped off, but other parts were still relatively intact and could be repaired and returned to combat. It is unclear whether Russian forces later attempted to recover the armored vehicle.

Russian ‘rare’ armored vehicle abandoned near Avdeevka — Abandoned Russian BTR-90 armored vehicle near Adveevka in a video posted on December 11. Video: *110th Ukrainian Brigade*

The BTR-90 is the first armored personnel carrier (APC) developed by Russia after the Cold War, with the ambition to put it into mass production from 2011. However, the Russian Ministry of Defense later refused to order the BTR-90, in the context that Moscow had just started developing a new APC model and still had many old BTRs in service.

This caused the mass production plan of BTR-90 to be canceled and only about 10 were built in total. These "rare" armored vehicles were then sealed in the warehouse of the 38th Scientific- Research Institute in Kubinka, a suburb of Moscow.

Images posted on social media in October showed at least one BTR-90 being withdrawn from storage and sent to Ukraine for combat duty. Moscow had previously withdrawn thousands of older T-55 and T-62 tanks from storage and sent them to the battlefield to replenish armored units that had suffered heavy losses.

The BTR-90 armored vehicle uses tires, weighs 22 tons, is equipped with a 2A42 30mm automatic cannon, an AGS-17 grenade launcher, a 7.62mm PKT machine gun and four Konkur anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM).

The bottom of the vehicle is V-shaped, which helps deflect explosions below and reduce damage from anti-tank mines. The crew consists of three people, including the commander, gunner and driver, and can carry an additional seven soldiers or seven tons of cargo. The vehicle has a range of 800 km, is equipped with a 510 horsepower engine, and reaches a maximum speed of 100 km/h on flat land and 12 km/h in water.

BTR-90 vehicle. Photo: Wikimedia — BTR-90 armored vehicle. Photo: *Wikimedia*

In mid-November, the 47th Ukrainian Brigade posted a video of a destroyed BMP-1U Shkva infantry fighting vehicle near Avdeevka, suggesting that Russia had brought the entire line of vehicles, once on display at the museum, to Ukraine.

Avdeevka has been one of the most heavily contested areas in Ukraine recently. Russia sent three brigades to attack Avdeevka in October and now has a pincer movement around the city, leaving the Ukrainian army only able to maintain supplies from the west.

This situation has made Avdeevka likened to "a second Bakhmut", the city that Kiev lost to Moscow in May, after a conflict that lasted more than 10 months and left thousands of soldiers on both sides dead.

Pham Giang (According to Newsweek, The Hill )

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