This year's Army International Games event in russia has been canceled, Kremlin's mass media report. The games were to include the so-called "tank biathlon" sport competition showcasing main battle tanks challenging in speed, accuracy, etc.
At the same time, as noted on the official tank biathlon website, the "tank biathlon world championship" was supposed to be held at the Alabino proving ground from August 12 to 26 as part of the ArMY-2024 international army games. "Cancellation and postponement are possible," the biathlon website notes.
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This is the second year in a row that the tank biathlon has been canceled in the russian federation. Last time, when the russians decided against hosting this event in 2023, they assured that instead tank biathlon will be included in the Army International Games held once every two years.
One of the reasons for this decision could be the large-scale losses of the russian army in armored personnel carriers since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Oryx OSINT community have counted 3,065 tanks visually confirmed to be lost by the invaders, of which 2,056 were destroyed. The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, however, claims to have neutralized 7,662 russian tanks to date.
Most notable these tank biathlon games are for the series of awkward failures, for example, when in 2020 the best tank crews of russia managed to miss guided missiles fired at a stationary target; and then later in 2022, when a K-17 Boomerang infantry fighting vehicle with its novel weapon station showed underwhelming performance by failing to defeat, once again, unmoving targets with both autocannon fire and missiles.
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