On December 31, 2014, we reported that the Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine appeared to have received a new supply of armor from Russia. This video revealed the presence of the BPM-97, which stands for Boyevaya Pogranichnaya Mashina (“Combat Border Vehicle”) used by the Russian border guards, which are part of the Federal Security Service or FSB. This vehicle is not known to be in service in Ukraine. The terrain visible in the video appeared at first to be flat and nearly featureless and it seemed it would be difficult to locate this area. But by matching other clues on social media, we were able to geolocate the Russian armor inside Ukraine.

This video is labeled “LNR [‘Lugansk People’s Republic’] Began Large-Scale Exercises Not from from Front Line”. The man in the cap with the red star speaking is Col. Kiselyev, deputy head of the LNR People’s Militia, or Russian-backed separatists. He speaks with the Russian-language accent native to the Donbass. The red star could indicate he is part of the LNR Communist faction or just admires the Soviet insignia. Thus, the video seems likely to be filmed in Lugansk, but this is not definitive. Here’s a video of Kiselyev handing out awards to some fighters on December 13 in which he says, “We are local residents of Lugansk” at 0:33 in the accent typical to the region — by contrast with the volunteers from South Ossetia dressed in hats common to the North Caucasus, whom he is addressing. Here’s a picture of him published earlier in December by the blogger Colonel Cassad from the press office of the Army of the South East which evidently was a screen grab from this video: Then on January 2, 2015, Lugansk News Today, a local news publication, published a photograph of the BPM-97 obtained from a fighter going by a fragment of the building visible in the scene. It was recognizable to locals as the Volodymyr Dal University

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Translation: the photo was made inside the courtyard of the Dal University, dormitory no. 4 is in the background. No Russian forces in Lugansk? Another local chipped in:

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Translation: That’s past the Machinists’ Institute bus stop. In the Vatutina quarter. A blogger named Antirezhim Yolki (@murderotica_) then geolocated the vehicle position in Lugansk here on Google Maps:

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Translation: Place where the Kamaz-43269 Vystrel of the Russian occupiers is at the Dal University.

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Lugansk Today then confirmed it:

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Translation: Thanks for the information…I will add the coordinates. The guys said that they had a training base there.

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Bellingcat, the investigative site, covered the story and made additional confirmations of the elements of the street scene which is important because there are a lot of brown buildings with white newspaper boxes in front of them in Ukrainian cities. Google Street View no longer works for Lugansk but it can still be seen on Yandex where we confirmed the whole scene. Getting the location for one photo was important, but it’s also vital to show the location of the group of BMP-97s on the firing range to make the case that Russia has significantly contributed to the war — and that this armor identified only with Russia’s army, Interior Ministry, Emergencies Ministry and Kazakhstan’s ministries is Ukraine, and not the other locations. Lugansk News Today, knowing the local terrain, guessed that the video was taken on a known former Ukrainian army base and provided a Google link:

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The blogger @5urpher said

he believed a likely spot for the fields in the December 31 video “not

far from the front line” was an old Ukrainian army base, No. 3035, which

had been taken over by the separatists, and which has a firing range

and testing ground on it. It is just north of Aleksandrovsk

(Oleksandrivsk), a town to the west of Lugansk.

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But it still had to be proven that the good guess for the scene, and the knowledge of locals of the area, and even coordinates possibly provided by a local cameraman’s account matched up with Google Maps and other known documentation of the area. So other landmarks had to be confirmed:

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