BBC Future has brought you in-depth and rigorous stories to help you navigate the current pandemic, but we know that’s not all you want to read. So now we’re dedicating a series to help you escape. We’ll be revisiting our most popular features from the last three years in our Lockdown Longreads.

You’ll find everything from the story about the world’s greatest space mission to the truth about whether our cats really love us, the epic hunt to bring illegal fishermen to justice and the small team which brings long-buried World War Two tanks back to life. What you won’t find is any reference to, well, you-know-what. Enjoy.

When the German army attacked the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, tanks were a crucial factor in their initial success. German tanks roared across the Soviet border giving the enemy no time to recover.

As the Soviets reeled under the surprise attack, the most powerful German formations swept through what is now Belarus. Huge battles were fought, leaving the land strewn with dead bodies and ruined machines.

Now, more than 75 years after the fighting, both Soviet and German tanks are being lifted from the marshes in Belarus. One Belarusian family has been looking for tanks littered all over the country’s vast marshes and restoring them. With photographer Anton Skyba, I was able to witness one heavy Soviet tank, a KV-1, being restored after its recovery – and its participation in a re-enactment of a World War Two battle.

The family, the Yakushevs are the most famous “tank-hunters” in Belarus.

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Some years ago Vladimir Yakushev worked as a collective farm engineer. One day, some people asked him to find and lift up a BT-7 tank, that had been stuck in the marshes since 1942.

Older locals said the vehicle had sunk into soft ground near a spring, but nobody knew the exact location. Vladimir suggested that the tank had been blocking the spring and the water had found a new route. He was absolutely right – the BT-7 was discovered 10 metres (33ft) away from the current spring.