Parade rehearsal, 2024. Chelyabinsk
Chelyabinsk is one of the closest regional cities to me (460 km away) that hosts military parades on May 9, so naturally I attended.
Again, not the parade itself, but its dress rehearsal. Judging by the number of people in the photos, you can tell that the equipment itself and I are in an area closed to the public. Getting there was quite difficult, but it didn’t require much effort, just a little ingenuity and an understanding of the Russian mentality. Everything was within the law.
There was a lot of motor vehicles, with an emphasis on military equipment and those from the Great Patriotic War. Apparently, there’s a reputable military-patriotic club based here.
I had the opportunity and pleasure to closely and thoroughly examine a convoy of military trucks with various equipment.
I also looked at the GAZ-67 – I have plans for that model.
But I was a bit embarrassed with the jeeps: I looked and saw people sitting there who looked like they were from the Korean War. I thought they were ours, Buryats, and made a joke about the similarity. And only by their reaction did I realize that these were not ours, but the Chinese.
It’s a big mystery how they got there.
Well, who could have imagined that in Chelyabinsk they would be bringing columns of Chinese to a parade!
Not only military vehicles but also civilian ones were on display.
It may be a little outside the declared period, but it is still very watchable.
The motorcycles are also interesting.
And after the war there was and is a lot of interesting equipment, starting from the BTR-40 armored personnel carrier and
and the LuAZ-967 front edge transporter
It’s very illustrative when equipment from different generations appears in a single frame.
The real difference here isn’t so much age as build. In any case, there was a solid representation of trucks.
It has become popular to bring various technical vehicles to parades.
I was thinking about how to move from trucks to armored vehicles: here’s an intermediate option.
If we continue the transformation in this direction, then from armored vehicles
quickly move on to the armored personnel carrier.
And from there it’s just a stone’s throw to the tanks,
but we won’t get there—the policemen won’t let us in. There, those ones, near the pole.
Politely, kindly, but they won’t let me in. So I’ll watch everything from that pole. If you want, you can have a look too.
I didn’t add any sound on purpose—the real roar of the engines is more engaging.
The video shows that the equipment is moving not only along this street, but also along the intersecting one. But I couldn’t get there. Maybe another time.
P.S. I would be gravely mistaken not to draw your attention to the «Blue Birds» — special vehicles designed for locating re‑entry spacecraft and transporting astronauts.
A truly rare beast in general, and at parades in particular. Previously, I thought that these were just one-off specimens with their own names. But no, only about 15 ZIL-49061 were produced.