It all began in 24 February 2022, when Russia started invading Ukraine in an escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War that began in 2014.
During the invasion considered the biggest attack on a European country since the World War II, tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilian and hundreds of thousands of military personnel have lost their lives. By April 2023, about 8 million Ukrainians had been internally displaced, and more than 8.2 million people had fled the country by May 2023.
In the war, each side either destroy or capture their opponent's equipment. And in the 20 months of Russian's wider war on Ukraine, the Ukrainian army has captured around 200 of Russia’s T-72B3 tanks.
The T-72B3, a product of Uralvagonzavod in Nizhny Tagil, is one of Russia’s newer tanks.
And this can become an issue when one of the units is captured.
Unlike older types of tanks, like the T-64BV, the T-80U or the T-72AMT, the Ukrainian military has little knowledge or experience when dealing with one.
For this reason, when a Ukrainian soldier with the callsign "Kochevnik" had issues with his captured Russian T-72B3, he bet his luck by calling Uralvagonzavod tech support using WhatsApp through his smartphone.
His hopes is that by contacting the help support line, he could fix the tank and have it running in no time.
And that is what exactly happened.
Kochevnik who serves the Ukrainian army's 54th Mechanized Brigade, was fighting near Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine, using old Soviet equipment, including T-64 tanks and BMP fighting vehicles. The brigade also operates some of Ukraine’s ex-Russian T-72B3s.
As a tanker, Kochevnik is experienced. But when dealing with his captured 45-ton, three-person tank that was leaking oil and had its compressors broken, he was totally blind.
Even the electrical turret-rotation mechanism kept failing, and forced his crew to rotate the turret manually with a hand crank.
Kochevnik tried trolling the Uralvagonzavod tech support, and indeed he was successful.
he man at the other end of the line, was a Russian named Aleksander Anatolevich.
During the call, Aleksander was clearly unaware that Kochevnik is a Ukrainian soldier. Aleksander forwarded his issues to the company's design bureau in Nizhny Tagil, where Kochevnik was given the contact of the tank's engine-manufacturer in Chelyabinsk.
Kochevnik didn't stop there.
This is because Kochevnik also managed to got ahold of Andrey Abakumov, a Uralvagonzavod director.
When Andrey asked Abakumov about his problems and asked him to describe the tank’s issues, that was Kochevnik finally revealed his identity.
Kochevnik revealed the the director that he is Ukrainian, and that his army had captured the problematic T-72 around Izium in the late 2022.
After that, Kochevnik hung up and laughed.
This friend of his is also heard laughing.
Previously, it was reported by an Ukraine government official on a Facebook post, that a Russian soldier surrendered his tank in return for money and citizenship.
