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| A story from the Russian blogger who names himself “ntv”: |
| “I had to write this blog entry, since many still cannot believe I managed to purchase a BRDM-2 (Combat Reconnaissance/Patrol Vehicle). Yes, I really did buy it, and brought it to Russia myself”. |
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| “It all started early this year, when one of my friends developed a keen interest in combat vehicles. I have to admit, the idea of actually buying one didn’t enter his mind, but the less he was interested in getting one, the more my own interest bloomed. |
| So, in early June I headed out to the dear-to-my-heart Republic of Belarus. | Turns out, during the summer, the prices for all combat armored vehicles in Russia rise rapidly, and the only affordable ones are severely beat up or suspicious models without any documentation. Of course I suspected that transporting and successfully gaining entry from Belarus would not be an easy task, but there were no other options. | Belarus overall and it’s Defence Ministry in particular do sell a tremendous amount of various combat and non-combat items. Recently they created a moderately easy-to-use website, which contains information on all items up for sale”. |
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| “They sell everything, from teapots to speedboats, armored personnel carriers and planes. I heard that soon they are going to make it a fully-fledged online store with a shopping basket and delivery services. “Your basket contains 1 item: a T-64B tank. Do you want to continue shopping?”. Fricking amazing! At times the catalogue contains photos of the items, but it’s best to view things like that for yourself. Unfortunately, foreign nationals (including russians) have to book a visit two weeks in advance with the State Security Committee of the Republic of Belarus (KGB RB for short), otherwise you won’t be able to enter the military bases. |
| All purchases of combat vehicles and surplus are dealt with via a belarusian government company “BelSpetzContract” (BSC). They’re located in this lovely red brick building, which I had to visit many a time.” |
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| “Of course I didn’t have an account in a Belarusian bank, so I had to pay cash. To be quite honest, gathering 100 mil. belarusian rubles is not for the faint of heart. Credit card and currency exchange limits can seriously mess with your plans, but that’s not even the biggest problem. The real trouble is that the biggest paper money Belarus has is 200,000, and 100 million even in the biggest bills is a very large stack. The shot below shows just 25 million, so the final amount was 4 times thicker”. |
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| “Finally, after cleaning out all the Sberbank ATMs, paying the bill and gathering up all the documents I went out to get my brand new ride. I needed not only to get the BRDM-2, but also transport it all the way back to Moscow. The idea of just riding it there flew out of the window immediately, so I had to find a car carrier trailer driver that agreed to help me out for a $1,000. I was actually really lucky the driver turned out to be belarusian and could freely enter the military base to get the armored vehicle I bought. As I said, I had to write two weeks in advance to the belarusian KGB, to warn them of my visit. Which I unfortunately didn’t do and had to wait outside and make selfies while the driver and the soldiers loaded the BRDM into the car carrier”. |
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| “Finally, the car carrier appeared over the bend, with my shiny new toy right in the back slot. Honestly I didn’t feel a hint of trepidation, as I was really exhausted from running back and forth all over the place with the documents to get this thing done”. |
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| “For extra safety, we decided to belt the BRDM in place with steel cabling and deflate it’s wheels. We turned it facing back, so it wouldn’t scare people behind us too much”. |
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| “You’ve already noticed that the BRDM wasn’t the only vehicle on the carrier. It had some wonderful company: |
| 1) A quad bike | 2) A Porsche Cayenne with a beat up bumper | 3) And a completely new Chevvy Corvette” |
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| “The Corvette was really cool, but it costs like 30 BRDM-2′s!” |
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| “On the way we were stopped four times. We were only asked to show proper documentation on the fourth stop, all others were limited to shocked questions “WHAT THE HELL KINDA TANK IS THIS?!” |
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| “The driver had a nice sense of humour and at the first three police stops he was like: | - What’s this? | - That’s for our guys on the South-East. | - Okay, carry on. |
| On the fourth time the road police decided to be strict and looked over our contract’s front page for about two minutes, then asked: | - So, dat must be very hungry one? How fast is it?” |
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| “After we arrived, it turned out that just pumping the wheels back up and rolling it off the carrier would be a no-go. The BRDM’s weight would simply crush the carrier’s back ramps and possible topple the entire thing over, damaging other cars. Thankfully, a nearby construction site loaned us their crane”. |
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| “It was really terrifying to ride through the city, everyone stopped and blocked us from all sides. Once we were on a three-lane highway and stopped in the middle lane at a red light, with three cars in front of us. First the cars on either side of us stopped right next to our BRDM, not right at the lights. Then the road police joined them on the right side and started taking photos of themselves in front of the BRDM! At least they had the decency to show us the way afterwards.) The entire way to Moscow, including rest stops, took 24 hours”. |
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| “It was late evening and we managed to install the accumulators and pump up the wheels. Unfortunately one of the gas tanks had a leak, and the wiring in this thing drove me into a stupor. Say you see two black cables and one white, and logically you could assume that the white one should be positive and the black ones should go to the weight. But no, one of the black ones turned out to be a positive one, it turned out to be feeding the starter”. |
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| “Of course we couldn’t leave an armored personnel carrier out on the street – it could be stolen easily. So we found a garbage truck (!) that agreed to take us to our dacha house in the country, since it wasn’t too far away, just 2 kilometers. |
| We tied the BRDM up to the truck with two cabled and, very slowly, departed. Problem was, we didn’t really have a license to drive it on public roads, it had no number plates or any russian documentation. So any encounter with the police would end in a fiasco. But we had no other choice |
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| “Found a couple of souvenirs inside”. |
| “Turns out, two cables aren’t going to cut it while pulling an armored combat vehicle. Right on a crossroads one of them snapped, signaling the end to all our plans. Getting stuck in the middle of a highway with a seven-tonne BRDM that couldn’t move on it’s own wasn’t a good new plan. Somehow, the single cable held out all the way to the dacha. |
| When we finally got there, we dropped it off near our fence, to attempt to start it the next morning. Right after waking up, I armed myself with all the instruction manuals and blueprints I had. Of course, the tricky accumulator scheme was not in those, but by midday I figured out that I just had to swap the cables around and presto – it started!” |
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| “Which my dog, Taras, immediately found very useful”. |
“The atmosphere inside is rather cozy, while polishing tools and swears and wrenches ring out outside”.
“A little more about the thing itself. BRDM-2 is a Combat Reconnaissance/Patrol Vehicle. It weighs 7 tonnes, has a 5.5 liter engine and 140 horsepowers. It consumes 40 liters of 92 octane gasoline every 100 kilometers. It’s an amphibious vehicle, which has a winch and a water cannon. Goes through any terrain, absolutely any.
And the main thing. Right now I’m in the active process of polishing it up, getting my license and documents. This will take some time, but after it’s all done, I will start the gnarliest road trip livejournal has ever seen. This won’t be a chilled-out ride on rented four-wheelers with underseat heating and night stops in Hiltons, but a real off-road expedition through mud, lakes, rivers and forests.
You or your company can easily sponsor our expedition. The logo of each sponsor will be applied onto the armor of this beast, and we’ll give each and every sponsor a special mention in every update we do. Right now I’m looking for technical sponsors, which can consist of:
1) A warm auto workshop in Moscow
2) Paint and finishing works
3) Armored windows and their installation
4) Laser cutting, welding, metalwork
5) Interior work
A technical sponsorship will is a relatively inexpensive and quick way to get your ad space throughout our expedition, don’t miss the chance! You can always reach me at tima @ tima.me
I’ll try to post updates on the finishing we are doing on the vehicle as often as possible.
And finally, the main question – “why?!”. Here’s what I can say. Just one ride in this thing makes all the questions instantly disappear. It’s super fun and you just cannot get an experience like it anywhere else in the world!”
