Tanks, mechanized infantry combat vehicles, missile launchers, barbed wire — and all of this on the outskirts of Kiev, within easy reach of inhabited buildings.
Not far from the “Partisan’s Glory” park lies the Darnitsky armour plant, and next to it a dump of military equipment that has been dubbed the Tank Cemetery. In the 1990s, broken equipment was brought here because there was no money for repairs.
The official name of the site is the Repair Park at the Armour Factory, which, by the way, is still in operation. You can see the tanks between the factory’s main entrance and the garage cooperative. Be careful: the territory of the Kiev tank cemetery is guarded by soldiers.
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Most of the wrecks here are T-64s — veterans of the Soviet Union and workhorses of the Ukrainian army. There are also T-62s and T-72s.
In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union had about 53,000 battle tanks. As late as 1991, Soviet tank factories could still produce thousands of tanks a year. At the Malyshev tank plant in Kharkov alone, 800 tanks were produced in the last year of Soviet Ukraine.
“Ukraine had approximately 5,000 to 7,000 tanks left after the breakup of the Soviet Union,” military expert and director of the consulting firm Defense Express Serhiy Zhurets told the Kyiv Post. “But I doubt that the government has allocated any funds at all for tank maintenance over the last 25 years. About 1,000 tanks could have been kept in good condition, but no more.”
By the way, sometimes near the “Red Khutor” metro station you can see the tanks driving past — these are repaired tanks undergoing tests.
Kiev is not the only place where you can take in the apocalyptic landscape of a tank cemetery.
The Kharkov armour repair plant specializes in the overhaul and modernization of T-64, T-80 and T-72 tanks, as well as 5TDF and GTD-1250 tank engines.
The plant also repairs tank sights, laser rangefinders and guided-weapon systems. By the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the plant had been overhauling about 60 tanks and 55 engines a month.
Today half of the plant is abandoned, but it is still operational.
By the way, it was here that the T-55-64 was developed — the Ukrainian main battle tank, a hybrid of the T-55 and T-64.