Remember when Russia lost a rare and experimental weapon in Ukraine?

Russia has lost a lot of military equipment since Moscow launched the invasion of Ukraine, and among those losses was a rare and experimental military vehicle that was destroyed at the end of 2023.

Rare and experimental weapons like the BMPT Terminator armored personnel carrier or the T-14 Armata tank have been spotted on the battlefield, but those vehicles were not nearly as surprising as the deployment of the BTR-90. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By Vitaly V. Kuzmin

Designed in the 1990s and built by the Arzamas Machine Building Plant, the BTR-90 is a relic of the post-Soviet era so rare that fewer than a dozen of these wheeled armored personnel carriers were made before being stored. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By Vitaly V. Kuzmin

Forbes journalist David Axe reported that at the time the BTR-90 was developed, there was simply no need for a new BTR since Russia had ample stocks of the older BTR-80, BTR-70, and BTR-60 inherited from the Soviet Union. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By Vitaly V. Kuzmin

However, Putin’s war in Ukraine created a need for the BTR-90 on the battlefield and in October 2023 one of Moscow’s rarest armored personnel carriers was seen fighting near the frontlines close to the embattled city of Avdiivka. 

“It’s not hard to understand why the Russians are pulling 30-year experimental vehicles out of long-term storage and sending them to the front line,” Axe wrote the BTR-90 in a report shortly after footage of the vehicle appeared online. 

Photo Credit: Telegram @btvt2019

Weighing in at over 20 tons, the BTR-90 is a rather modern weapon compared to some of the older armored personnel carriers the Russian Armed Forces have deployed over the nearly two years Putin has been trying to conquer Ukraine. 

The BTR-90 requires three crew members to man the vehicle and it can accommodate a passenger load of seven soldiers. It also has a thicker hull to protect the troops inside the vehicle according to Military Today’s breakdown of the carrier. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By Vitaly V. Kuzmin

The BTR-90 sports special explosive reactive armor as well as a very powerful 30 mm cannon and coaxial 7.62 mm machine gun, which makes the armored carrier a pretty useful weapon on today’s modern battlefields. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By Vitaly V. Kuzmin

In addition to its cannon and machine gun, the BTR-90 also carries a grenade launcher and a single anti-tank guided missile launcher that can be detached from the carrier and used by infantry troops to fire missiles from the ground. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By Vitaly V. Kuzmin

“The BTR-90 isn’t a bad vehicle,” Axe wrote about the Russian armored vehicle. But he did add that its appearance on the battlefields of Ukraine in October 2023 spoke to Russia’s “industrial desperation” as it suffered hefty equipment losses. 

“The Kremlin is working hard to mobilize its weapons industry for a war that could grind into 2025 or beyond,” Axe added. But these efforts take time and money. And in the meantime, Russian regiments still needed fresh vehicles.

Axe's assessment was spot on, and likely the reason why the rare and experimental BTR-90 made it to the frontlines in Ukraine in the first place. However, the armor carrier didn’t make it long before it was seen abandoned somewhere in Krasnohorivka. 

Video footage published by Ukraine's 110th Separate Mechanized Brigade and reported on by Newsweek’s Ellie Cook revealed the fairly modern and powerful BTR-90 was one of many destroyed or damaged vehicles. 

Photo Credit: 110th Separate Mechanized Brigade via Telegram @lost_warinua

Newsweek could not independently verify the video footage, but if it was genuine, it would be the first recorded instance of a BTR-90 being lost. However, that isn’t as impressive as it sounds considering how so few were made. 

“The BTR-90 is an extremely rare armored personnel carrier,” wrote Technology.Org about the armored personnel carrier. “It is really not that special, but Russians are losing so much equipment that they are using even these rare machines.”

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons Par Vladimir Gorbunov

Technology.Org added that the BTR-90 would be destroyed by the Ukrainian Armed Forces to prevent its use by Russian forces if they could recover the vehicle.