Russia’s Tank Brigade Which Fought Against Ukraine Heads For Belarus?

Despite all efforts, the truth about the West-2017 military exercises came out.

It is widely known that the military drills West-2017 will take place on September 14-20 in the territory of Belarus, involving thousands of Russian military men and hundreds of units of the military equipment. However, the online investigators of the American strategic center Atlantic Council found out that it would be, at least partially, the soldiers who already participated in the combat actions at alien territory – against Ukraine in 2014, Belsat TV reports.

There was public information that the units of the 1st guard tank army of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation will participate in the exercises – Belarusian Minister of Defense Andrei Raukou informed this back in spring.

In early August, the evidence of the Russian military getting prepared for shipment to Belarus started appearing in the social networks, said Nika Alekseyeva, an employee of the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab.

One of the soldiers posted on his vk.com page a message “Ready for Byelorussia. One day to go”, on August 11.

The photo has a geo-tag of the village of Mulino, Volodarskiy district, Nizhniy Novgorod region of Russia, the place of location of the 6th separate tank brigade (the military unit #54096). Since autumn 2014, this formation has been included into the squad of the 1st guard tank army.

Tanks and insignia of the 6th brigade

Also, the 6th brigade fought against Ukraine, saving the troops of the so-called “DNR” and “LNR” from utter defeat. The online investigation of a blogger, published back in 2015, confirms this.

The blogger found about 20 personal accounts of the brigade’s soldiers by the photos, taken in the field camp in Rostov region in September 2014.

He connected the permanent tactical marks of the combat vehicles of the brigade with the temporary tactical marks, when the vehicles were repainted for the war against Ukraine.

The brigade had in 2014 and now has the tanks T-72B3 in service. This modification was developed in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, so the Ukrainian army had none of them.

Combat losses

In the course of the battles with the Ukrainian army in August 2014, the brigade suffered losses. On August 26, two soldiers of the brigade were reported dead. Dmitry Gorbachyov, who served in the formation himself, posted the photo.

On August 28, Andrei Frolov wrote what it was about in a comment to some other post.

Both deceased served in the 6th tank brigade. Herein, the photo of the grave of one of them got to the publication of The New York Times about the secret burials of the Russian soldiers, killed in Donbas.

The Ukrainians even managed to temporarily capture one tank T-72B3 during the fighting - and this tank belonged to the 6th Russian tank brigade. In the tank, there was a rifle stock record card of Private Alexei Berezin.

And it’s exactly the man under number 1 in the group photo in the field camp of the 6th tank brigade in Rostov region.

The brigade lost not just one tank in the battles against the Ukrainians. Here's the T-72B3, which was completely destroyed. It also wears temporary tactical marks in the form of a white circle.

It is clear that the Russian journalists mispresented the machine for the destroyed Ukrainian tank.

Captives

Moreover, several soldiers of the brigade were temporarily captured by the Ukrainian volunteer battallion “Donbas”.

Back then, the 6th separate tank brigade was a part of the 20th combined-arms army of the Western Military Command of the Russian Federation. Among the captives, there were also the same soldiers from the group photo, taken in the camp in Rostov region – Ivan Badanin (number 17) and Evgeniy Chernov (number 10).

Here is Ivan Badanin near the monument with a tank at the territory of his brigade in summer 2011. The monument has a sign with the full name of the 6th separate brigade.

It remains unknown which exactly formations of the 6th separate tank brigade are going to Belarus to take part in the exercises, but, obviously, the brigade has the traditions of the “hybrid war”, which is confirmed by the research conducted by sled-vzayt.livejournal.com and Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.