Two Ukrainian video bloggers have sneaked into at tank storage facility and revealed significant security weaknesses at a state-owned tank factory in Kharkiv.
One of the men, who uses the nickname Dima Total, posted a recording of their adventure to YouTube on June 15. The video showed hundreds of old tanks and a dozen new ones stored in an outdoor storage warehouse with no security.
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The video was viewed over 400,000 times and became an internet sensation. Many viewers were outraged that a strategic location like a tank warehouse was left unguarded while Ukraine fights a war against Russia and its proxies in Donbas.
A reposted YouTube video originally published on July 15 by two bloggers in Kharkiv who managed to sneak into the local tank factory and filmed hundred unguarded tanks there. (YouTube)
The police have opened a criminal case against the bloggers, who now face up to three years in jail for sneaking onto the factory premises.
The fact that the security breach happened in Kharkiv is especially sensitive.
Kharkiv, an eastern Ukrainian industrial city some 480 kilometers away from Kyiv, is one of the strongholds of the Ukrainian military. Here, they repair the armored vehicles and send them to the neighboring Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, where the Ukrainian army has been fighting Russian forces and their local proxies since 2014.
In the video description, the bloggers say they stumbled upon the tank warehouse while looking for interesting locations: “bomb shelters, bunkers, or something as unusual.”
In the video, they climb the fence surrounding the warehouse.
“We are already sitting on the fence of this tank warehouse and nobody is shooting at us yet,” one of the bloggers says in the video, smiling.
They then climb atop of one of the new tanks in the storage space but decide not to risk getting into the vehicle.
“What if some machine gun starts working?” one of them says in the video.
Later the two men are seen entering a bunker and showing off the new gas masks and other equipment stored there.
Military officials and the state arms producer have blamed each other for the tanks being unguarded.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense reported it had nothing to do with the tank warehouse located on the territory of the tank factory.
However, Ukroboronprom, a holding company of state-owned military enterprises which owns the tank factory, claimed that the tanks were the “property of the Ministry of Defense and belong to the army.”
The tanks were not guarded because Ukroboronprom and the Ministry of Defense did not sign a contract regulating how the tanks were to be stored, Ukroboronprom said in its statement.
Ukraine has a history of destructive explosions at ammunition depots, which the authorities often blame on intruders and Russian saboteurs.
In one of the best known incidents, a military arsenal located near Balakliya city in Kharkiv Oblast caught on fire in March 2017. This led to massive explosions, and the residents of Balakliya and nearby villages had to be evacuated.
Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak claimed the explosions in Balakliya were caused by an “act of sabotage.” However, critics blamed weak safety procedures at the depot: it had outdated heavy ammunition stored under the open air with an insufficient number of soldiers guarding it.
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