Image source: Photo: "Bulletin of Mordovia"
Despite the fact that the first Chechen war ended more than a quarter of a century ago, there are a lot of myths and misconceptions around it. For example, information about the participation of T-90 tanks in those hostilities still pops up from time to time in various sources.
At that time, these Nizhny Tagil combat vehicles, as well as the T-80U gas turbine and T-80UD "foreign cars", were considered the most modern of those in service with the Russian Army. There were relatively few of them and they were especially appreciated.
The T-90 and T-80U were intensively promoted for export, and therefore the military understood perfectly well that photos or video frames from a damaged or, God forbid, captured by militants from this hot spot would be something like anti-advertising. In addition, there were plenty of tanks of earlier models at that time.
During his work at various times, the author had the opportunity to talk, including in an informal setting with representatives of the Main Armored Vehicle Directorate, test officers, all of them refuted rumors about sending the "nineties" to the North Caucasus.
This myth was born, apparently, due to the fact that some military personnel not too versed in technology confused the T-90 with a modification of the T-72B with built-in dynamic protection "Contact -5". In principle, from some distance these tanks could be confused, they are really very similar.
Lev Romanov