This article by Burko News using the materials of Irakli Komaxidze of Informnapalm and translated by Eugenia Zlamanuk has always been vexing because it makes a claim regarding "Russian T-90 Tanks of the 136th Motorized Rifle Brigade in Lugansk Region" yet there's no picture of any geolocated T-90 in Lugansk Region in the story.
There's a photo taken from the now-deleted account of Russian tankman Vitalek Marakasov showing a soldier pointing to a road sign that has been geolocated in Lugansk Region (note that the name is mispelled within the article but the screenshots where it is visible indicates it is Marakasov):
Maybe it's self-evident to someone that the box thing — some kind of radar? electronic device to control things? is sitting on top of what looks like a tank edge — but I don't know, I've never heard that.
UPDATE: Answer: a colleague told me it is AN AMMO BOX. However, you can see why it looks it has a computer/video item as it looks as if it has an indented screen. That's all. I asked this question to FIND OUT what it was from those knowledgeable, not to make any stupid claim.
Here's what a Russian ammo box looks like:
I've look at lots of ammo boxes not only in Internet searches, I've seen them in plenty of videos. This one in the picture doesn't quite look like any I've seen. Can anyone precisely ID it?
Furthermore, there were elements of this picture that made it seem like a computer screen even after many looks to the untrained eye. I will highlight to explain how that perception comes about because the trained eye may not understand it:
These things in fact may merely be a the indented space to hold ammunition, and a strap, derp. I get it.
The point is I am trying to make these conflict reports that come out and get no attention that don't seem persuasive more understandable to non-specialists by having more baby-steps in them to explain what's going on.
The first job of any analysis with this entire story is to explain what the reasoning is to tie a T-90 to a scene without any T-90, and what that box is.
So let's move on.
First, let's find that road sign. The Panoramio photo used by Irakli is very blurry:
You can make out the word "Starobelsk" if you squint but it would be better to find the photo and the geolocation of that photo that always goes with Panoramio — which were not provided in the story, perhaps under the illusion that if you don't show this information, these things won't be deleted by the FSB — or at least you slow them down.
But given that the name visible on the photo — "Bogdan Smykov" — enables you to find it eventually anyway, there's no reason not to supply it. Smykov has taken hundreds of photos of this region but this particular photo isn't showing on the map — you have to be sure to check off "Also show photos not selected for Google Earth."
Then, unless you had the patience to page through hundreds of photos (I did that any way in case he had any more useful ones) you will find it is here on Panoramio.
Here is the picture then, with a better resolution, and the title "New Lugansk Bypass".
Here you can see Krasny Luch pointing left, Lugansk right, and Starobelsk forward.
You still have to hunt for it because there are lots of signs like that, and as Burko points out, he thanks: "Artem Vasilenko of the informnapalm group for help in defining the locality" — you need a local to point out something like this often, just like if you showed me a picture of this sign of what we locals called "the Can of Worms" I would set you down here:
So, here is the Lugansk road sign on Google maps. That wasn't supplied in the story, which is annoying, and I wish it would become standard to always supply although if you squint — you can find some coordinates on a screengrab of the road on a zoom-out and a very refined job of matching up trees and the sign board (called bigbord in Ukrainian Russian).
Here you can see it's north of the Lugansk International Airport.
Note that I don't have the exact location of the soldier on the zoom-out, just trying to show how the elements match to each other:
It's a mere five kilometers from the Lugansk International Airport.
BTW, in the Burko story, a slide is shown of the old airport which is now an aviation museum — visible as a large square on the map similar to the way the Donetsk International Airport looks — and a *different* bypass to the south, which is confusing, unless they want to show the whole area for some reason — but it's not clear why.
This article says "Now we can know for sure that Russian T-90 tanks took part in battles near the Luhansk airport" — well, the soldier is near the airport and the dates might work.
In a story like this, context that may be taken for granted by researchers but the average journalist, let alone researcher, will not immediately think of the battle of August 16 – this soldier was recorded in a photograph five minutes away from the airport and may be related to the battle for the Lugansk International Airport on August 16 or some other day.
Soldiers often upload their photographs much later, after their tour of duty is over, so an upload in October of a picture that doesn't look as if it is in the fall (someone could do Suncalc on it) means you still have to think of previous months.
I don't have time to track down that box, but it could be something like no. 4, "video image intelligence processing equipment" like this on the T90-MS, another later version of the Russian tank. I have no idea if this is portable and detachable.
UPDATE: THIS WAS AN INVESTIGATION TRYING TO DETERMINE THE NATURE OF THE BOX, NOT AN AFFIRMATION OF WHAT IT WAS. People are very, very afraid to use hypotheses and logic and try to figure out something, rejecting invalid notions as they go along. They think either you have to be an expert on something and pronounce on it, or shut up.
I don't see any T-90 tank proven in this article, so I look for reasons to prove it. I ask "What's this thing? What's that thing?" I try to find using existing diagrams of T-90 tanks what it might be.
It turns out it's likely an ammo box — but it sure does look like a computer screen:
But this is the kind of thing you need to explain, if the argument is "This box proves the T-90 is there at that location."
I think the argumentation, however, judging from the story was that this man was in a unit with T-90s, which we could see in other pictures, therefore the T-90 was there in Ukraine. And that's something most people not immersed in conflictology are going to find tenuous.
The information is that this picture was "posted on the VK social network page of a Russian tank trooper. The unit involved was the tank battalion of the 136th Motorized Rifle Brigade (m/u 63354 based in Buinaksk, Dagestan."
Well, naturally if there's a picture posted in a VK group for Russian tank troopers (it would be helpful to provide its exact name so the proof can be duplicated) then there's a strong suspicion that the T-90 could be in Ukraine, along with this soldier geolocated to Ukraine. It's certainly not implausible.
Again, the evidence for this is tenuous — a picture from the now-deleted account in which Marakasov, wearing a helmet that has his tank number stencilled on it — known to have that sort of tank — is shown in a conversation as follows:
That's certainly tantalizing, as it sounds like it means "southeastern Ukraine," but most mainstream media editors would likely find this inconclusive, given that a Russian soldier could be in some other place, and still refer it to "over there," like the 1917 George M. Cohan song popular in World War I and World War II.
We can go back to other circumstantial evidence, like photos that haven't been deleted, such as this one, but it's in Novocherkassk, Russia — at least a half day or more drive away, so that's still not proof of being in Ukraine — just likely it is moving in that direction:
That is geolocated by The Interpreter here. It's still visible on Instagram. I saved a copy because unfortunately, the other photo in this story said to be closer, already in Rostov Region, is now deleted from Instagram, not in Google cache, nor archive.org (social media can seldom be found there) — or anywhere — so save your pictures, guys.
Here's a useful archive of Lugansk International Airport. Remember the large explosion at the International Airport and how it was shelled out.
Before (photo by Svyatoslav Pomozyan):
After:
This is to establish that the battle was at the Lugansk International Airport August 16, 2014.
So, unfortunately, this story is inconclusive. Through more trawling of the VK group or other members of this tank unit, maybe something more could be matched.
This now well-known T-90 photo from InformNapalm on the dusty road is from Marakasov — and that's why it seems likely and why people want to pin it down.
But as @DaJeyPetros just said, he has looked all over, including the Lugansk International Airport north and south, and never found it.
So it's still not confirmed. Yes, when you give links to social media accounts they can disappear — and disappear even without you doing that. Yes, these seems to be pictures taken from that account, but without the link, you'd have only the word of the researcher — and in this case, no one else has been able to see this outside this specialized Ukrainian news site's editor.
And from experience I know that researchers like this huffily tell you to go fuck yourself if you don't believe them, and that you must be a Moscow shill, because they've seen more of the context and are immersed in it, and you haven't — and they can't show that, they say, without risking deletion of the account.
And as I've repeatedly pointed out, there's a simple solution to this problem, which is to show the "find" to some credible journalist, preferably a mainstream media one, so that there is a "witness" to that social media event. Then that person can vouch for it when it is deleted. And yes, that's essentially what Irakli did by showing it to Burko, which was informed enough to grasp this process. But that's not like showing it to, oh, Shaun Walker of the Guardian.
There could even be such an "ombudsman" created somewhere or some "buddy system" to do this. But no one seems interested in doing this because they want to establish their own reputations by fiat. In any event, "I do believe, I do believe," I'd just like to do due diligence so that others will.
But I just don't see anything else to work with.
Marakasov has another photo which they imply is taken in Ukraine, but it's also not geolocated, and these beverages don't seem to be distinctively local, but maybe someone will recognize something:
