Cheap Chinese Tyres Leave Putin’s Russian Army Stuck in Ukraine’s Mud

(Social media footage snapshot shows a mud-stuck Russian Pantsir missile system in Ukraine)

Western military experts, who have been stunned by the abject failures of the Russian military in Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, are now finding all kinds of causes for Russia’s weakness.

These causes include unlimited corruption and “cheap Chinese tyres”, among others.

Putin’s ‘Grand Army’ Stuck in Ukrainian Mud

Lured by President Joe Biden’s blatant foreign policy weakness, Putin decided earlier this year to take advantage and conquer Ukraine.

Putin invaded Ukraine with almost 200,000 troops on February 24 from three sides, but the miraculously courageous Ukrainian forces have beaten back Russian invaders all over the map.

As of May 1, after 66 days of fighting, the Ukrainian government estimates more than 23,500 Russian soldiers have been killed, and more than 5,500 units of Russian military equipment are destroyed.

Rampant corruption and nepotism in post-communist Russia have been a great ally of Ukraine and the entire free world, as it caused various kinds of failures in the Russian invasion.

One of the most striking failures appears to have to do with “cheap Chinese tyres” procured for Russia’s military trucks and other vehicles by corrupt generals and bureaucrats, the Daily Mail reported.

Those caused large numbers of the invaders’ vehicles to get stuck with flat tyres or bogged down in the sticky mud of the Ukrainian steppe.

Apparently, the terrible quality of the otherwise quite cheap tyres that the Russian military procured for its vehicles from Chinese imports contributed a great deal toward stalling Putin’s invasion.

Russian trucks, armored personnel carriers, and jeeps have been getting stuck in the mud as soon as their operators decide to veer off-road.

This served to keep the Russians stuck to the roads, making them easy prey for the ambushes of determined Ukrainian fighters.

 

(Social media footage snapshot)

Chinese Tyres Linked to Embezzlement

The report emphasizes the Chinese tyres in question are of particular “poor quality,” leaving Putin’s invaders mired in Ukraine’s rough terrains.

The vehicles of the 30-strong NATO alliance, led by the United States, usually use quality Michelin XZL tyres. Chinese companies love stealing and/or copying the intellectual property of western producers, but their replicas are often flawed.

Corrupt Russian officials have seemingly decided to take advantage of the large quantities of bad, cheap Chinese tyres and embezzle much of the Russian government money slated for the purpose.

A report by The New Zealand Times cites an unnamed intelligence source as saying the generals of the Russian military “are notoriously corrupt.” A lot of Russia’s $70 billion annual defense budget gets “siphoned off” from top to bottom.

As a result, the source said, the Russian military equipped expensive armored vehicles with cheap tyres, which “just don’t work.”

According to Karl Muth, a professor from the University of Chicago, the Chinese version of the Michelin tyres used by NATO is called “Yellow Sea YS20”, and its quality is tremendously poor.

Whereas a set of 50 tyres of the Michele XZL type costs about $36,000 on Alibaba, the entire set of the Chinese equivalent is $208.

The Russians also seemed to have maintained the tyres quite poorly. Factors such as long-term sunlight exposure cause them to rip, exposing Russian invaders to Ukrainian counterattacks and ambushes all over the map.

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