Not certain about the provenence of the commentary below, as it came from a Telegram account.
[ColonelCassad] North Macedonia handed over to Ukraine T-72 tanks, which Russia had once presented to Ukraine as fraternal aid against the Albanians.
Now that your attention has been drawn ( https://t.me/rbc_news/54878 ), let's talk about how fact-checking overcomes evil.
The Serbian portal RTS published a note on the morning of July 29, in which described how North Macedonia is handing over T-72 tanks to Ukraine. “The Macedonian army has 31 vehicles of this type in service. These tanks were supplied to the authorities of Skopje by Russia in 2000 during the uprising of Ali Ahmeti’s People’s Liberation Army,” write the Serbs. This note was brought to the attention of the Russian Interfax, honestly reprinting the information without double-checking.
Following Interfax, the information of the Serbian RTS is being reprinted by the Ukrainian media, which, despite all the events of the past five months, are still closely monitoring the Russian media in search of informational reasons. And now UNIAN writes about a Russian gift given to Ukrainians.
In reality, of course, everything was a little different: not a gift, but a sale, and not by Russia, but by Ukraine. In 1999, even before the start of the Albanian uprising, Ukraine and then just Macedonia signed a contract for the supply of military equipment from Soviet reserves, RBC notes. Deliveries, Kyiv, of course, delayed.
A batch of Soviet-made T-72A from 31 combat vehicles came to Skopje only in 2001. “This is the last batch of tanks to Macedonia, which was carried out in accordance with the agreement concluded between Ukraine and Macedonia in 1999. We, as a contracting party with Macedonia, assumed certain obligations, and as a predictable and reliable partner, we had to fulfill them," he said (dead link) in 2001, Anatoly Zlenko, then Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.
In 2022, the circle closed and the T-72A drove back.
In connection with this story, I would like to draw attention to several points. Firstly, Ukrainian monitors continue to follow their Russian counterparts just as closely as before, when the Ukrainian media generally followed the lead of Russian media giants. The story of the transfer of the “Russian gift” to Ukraine was born not in the bowels of the CIPSO, but in the Russian information field.
Secondly, it is certainly interesting to observe the tonality of informational reasons wandering from the country - if for the Serbs the transfer of "Russian" tanks to Ukraine looks like an occasion to once again reproach their southern neighbor, who betrayed the Slavic brotherhood and left for NATO, then in the Ukrainian media and blogs this history turns into yet another reason to laugh at Russia.
By the way, where did the rumors about the transfer of Russian tanks to North Macedonia in 2000 really come from? It’s hard to imagine now, but their roots are in the once-existing “brotherhood” of Moscow and Kyiv. In 2000, the British Times published an article on the supply of arms to Macedonia by Michael Evans, which stated that both Russia and Ukraine were supplying weapons to this conflict zone. “The main supplier of weapons is Ukraine.
But, of course, Russian weapons are also coming in. There is no doubt that the government is behind this. By the way, these weapons are supplied on absolutely legal grounds, these operations cannot be called illegal, ”the author of the article said in an interview with the then foreign media agent Radio Liberty.
https://t.me/vatfor/7922 - zinc
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin:
In general, as in a joke - not in chess, but in preference, and did not win, but lost.