New photos of the BTR-50 of the Russian army released

The first high-quality photo of the BTR-50 PU armored personnel carrier, which Russia is restoring to use in the war against Ukraine, was released online.

The Ukraine Weapons Tracker team published the photo.

According to the source, at least several of these vehicles were transferred to the Russian troops.

Militarnyi first reported their appearance on February 23, when a convoy of these vehicles on tank tractors was spotted in Ukraine.

At that time, Militarnyi suggested that old armored personnel carriers were being returned to service to be used as a ground-based kamikaze drone filled with explosives, but a new photo clarifies that this is unlikely.

First of all, the installed NSVT (or its Russian copy “Kord”) machine gun is worth noting, which clearly indicates the intention of using these APCs as a vehicle in the combat zone.

Despite being returned to service after a long time in storage, the vehicles were not painted (large spots of rust are noticeable in some areas), and the headlights appear to be non-operational. This leads to an assumption that the vehicles did not undergo a full overhaul but received only partial inspection, and only broken nodes were replaced.

As of now, it is difficult to exactly explain the return of such an archaic armored personnel carrier, the youngest of which now being over 50 years old, if there are enough modern and much better MTLBs tracked armored personnel carriers at the same storage bases.

Presumably, an extremely high amount of lost equipment during the year of the war and mobilization created a demand for armored vehicles in the Russian military, which the Russian industry simply cannot satisfy within a reasonable time.

The above version can be confirmed by the growing trend of creating ersatz-IFVs from MTLB tracked APC, on which the Russians are installing 2М-3М ship turrets with 25mm automatic guns or naval twin KPVT machine guns. The BTR-50 that has been put into service can be seen as a platform to install heavy weapons.

Another version, although unlikely, could be a return BTR-50 precisely because of its good seaworthiness for river crossing operations, but this can only be judged by the location where these vehicles will be concentrated.

The armored personnel carrier was designed on the basis of a PT-76 amphibious light tank from which it inherited the ability to float. The vehicle is able to confidently navigate water without prior preparation and transport up to two tons of cargo while afloat.