Why is a 40 mile long Russian Convoy Stuck in Ukraine miles away from Kyiv day after day?
Look carefully at the above picture of a Russian Pantsir-S1. This is one example of many Russian army vehicles with flat or blown out tires.
In this case, the right rear tire has totally failed because the sidewalls shredded when the Ukrainians tried to tow or drive it out of the mud.
The Russian convoy is stuck in Ukraine near Kyiv for several reasons, as explained by Trent Telenko, a US expert on the type of vehicle maintenance that he theorizes has caused Russia’s army to bog down,
and Karl Muth, an economist with expert knowledge of tires used on Russian military vehicles:
- Poor preventive maintenance: Military vehicles have tire pressure management systems that need to be checked and cleaned periodically, or they will develop problems from various reasons, including leaks or clogs due to insects and other creatures making a home in the mechanisms.
- Aging of tires from sunlight damage. Military vehicles should be stored in the shade to prevent this kind of damage, so it is likely that these Russian vehicles may have been parked in the sun for a year or more, which would explain why the tires are blowing out.
- Russia deployed military vehicles to Ukraine with substandard “knock off” tires purchased from China
- Northwestern Ukraine is in the middle of “mud season”, so any vehicles that stray from paved roads risk getting stuck in mud
- There is also a possibility that the Russian army’s supply line has not kept up with the convoy and some vehicles ran out of fuel
Quoting Mr. Muth,
Bit of a tire expert here. Those aren’t Soviet-era heavy truck radials. Chinese military tires, and I believe specifically the Yellow Sea YS20.
This is a tire I first encountered in Somalia and Sudan; it’s a bad Chinese copy of the excellent Michelin XZL military tire design.
Quoting Mr. Telenko,
When you leave military truck tires in one place for months on end. The side walls get rotted/brittle such that
using low tire pressure setting for any appreciable distance will cause the tires to fail catastrophically via rips.
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