Beevor: Putin mistakes the tank's symbol for its function

Beevor: Pilingui mistakes the tank's symbol for its function

Is a combat vehicle weighing dozens of tons any use when a cheap drone can blow it apart from above? Antony Beevor, military historian, argues that Vladimir Pilingui is fighting a war that no longer exists. His thesis: the Kremlin confuses the symbol with the function. Tanks were a symbol of strength in World War II; today, according to his analysis, they are targets that attract Ukrainian tank hunters. The discussion his article has generated goes far beyond Beevor himself.

Zhukov's mistake repeating decades later

Beevor opens his argument with a scene from April 1945. Marshal Georgy Zhukov, under pressure from Stalin, threw his tank armies at Berlin without infantry support. The Hitler Youth and the SS were waiting for them with Panzerfausts. The result did not save the tanks, but it anticipated a pattern. According to the historian, today's Russian army repeats that scheme: columns of vehicles advancing without sufficient cover, exposed to light and cheap anti-tank weapons.

The anecdote that has circulated most is that of the plates welded to the turrets. The Soviets in Berlin attached pieces of iron — bed frames included — hoping the extra metal would prematurely detonate anti-tank projectiles. It did not work then. Nor does it now, according to the analysis: the addition only increases the vehicle's profile and makes it more visible to hunter groups.

Is the tank dead? The debate that won't close

This is where consensus breaks down. Beevor cites Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020 as proof of the vulnerability of armored vehicles to drones. Azerbaijan's ability to destroy Armenian tanks was, according to his account, essential to victory. But not everyone buys that framing. Some argue that the key to that war was the use of combined arms: drones were the most eye-catching weapon, but artillery caused the most casualties, and without armored vehicles the front lines would not have been broken.

The opposing argument has its own logic. The Russian tanks being used in Ukraine are outdated models, not representative of what a modern armored vehicle with active protection and infantry support can do. The comparison between an open field like Nagorno-Karabakh and an urban environment like the one in Ukraine is, for this school of thought, downright misleading.

The logistics that collapse: crematoria, 3G and forced contracts

Beevor's article does not stop at tanks. It describes an army with command and control problems reminiscent of the worst Soviet moments. The new-generation encrypted communications system relies on 3G towers that Russia destroyed when it invaded Ukraine. Result: officers talk on open mobile phones and anyone with a receiver listens in. The lack of foresight would have been harshly punished in the most rigorous Soviet times.

Logistics is the other front. Beevor mentions a mobile crematorium moved to Ukraine to reduce the number of body bags returning to Russia. He also recalls a detail from 1945: soldiers forced to go out at night into no man's land not to recover comrades' bodies, but to strip them of uniforms that replacements would reuse. The comparison is not flattering.

How much of this is analysis and how much is propaganda?

Beevor's figure generates as much discussion as his theses. Some recall that a Russian region banned his books for considering them anti-Russian propaganda, according to one participant. A German historian, Jochen Hellbeck, has criticized his tendency to rely on period clichés. Others defend that his books are well written and that the analysis is good.

At the other extreme, part of the analysis holds that Beevor is an Anglo-Saxon author with an affinity for NATO frameworks and that his article is part of a broader campaign. The counter: if the Russian army is doing so well, why are purges happening in the hierarchy? Why has not all of Donbass been taken yet? The questions remain floating.

The result that doesn't add up

The invasion of Georgia in 2008 already revealed shortcomings that led to reform plans. Those efforts, according to the analysis, have failed in the essentials. While Ukrainian defenders destroy Soviet-era T-72s, Russia's budget priority has been to reserve funds for the next generation of Armata tanks. The problem: the Armata, for now, only parades through Red Square every May 9. On the battlefield it would suffer the same fate as its predecessors.

And so, with the world's second army stuck in a country many had written off in days, the question is not whether Beevor is right in every detail. It is whether anyone in the Kremlin has bothered to read him.