Vitaly Shevchenko
From the air, these look just like an M777 Howitzer, a Himars missile launcher and a Humvee vehicle used by Ukraine
In June 2023, a video started spreading on pro-war Russian social media channels, apparently showing a drone destroying a Ukrainian tank in a massive explosion.
But not everything is what it seems in the Russia-Ukraine war.
That video was followed by Ukrainian footage showing a laughing soldier pointing at the burning wreckage and exclaiming: "They've hit my wooden tank!"
The tank in question appears to be a plywood decoy used by the Ukrainian forces to deceive the Russians.
It is one of many thousands of full-scale models of military equipment used by both Ukraine and Russia to trick the enemy into wasting valuable ammunition, time and effort.
Almost anything seen on the frontline - from small radars and grenade launchers to jeeps, trucks, tanks and actual soldiers - may be fake.
These imitations can come in flat-packs, be inflatable, 2D or create a radar illusion of a tank by reflecting radio waves in a special way.
In the case of some weapon types deployed in Ukraine, at least half of them are actually decoy imitations.
Flat-pack artillery
Among the most popular decoys used by the Ukrainian army are models of the British-made M777 howitzers. Western allies are understood to have supplied Kyiv with more than 150 of these highly manoeuvrable and accurate artillery pieces, nicknamed "Three Axes" by Ukrainian soldiers.
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