MOSCOW: Western tanks and military hardware captured by Russian forces in Ukraine went on display in Moscow on Wednesday at an exhibition the Russian military said showed Western help would not stop it winning the war.
Long queues of people formed on what was a sunny May Day public holiday at the entrance to the exhibition, entitled “Trophies of the Russian Army,” which is being held outside a museum celebrating the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.
“History is repeating itself,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement, adding that the Soviet Union had in 1943 also put on a display of captured tanks and hardware, in this case from the German army.
“Strength is in the truth. It’s always been that way. In 1943 and today. These war trophies reflect our strength. The more of them there are, the stronger we are,” the ministry stated, predicting a Russian victory in what it officially calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
“No Western military equipment will change the situation on the battlefield,” the statement added.
According to Western and Ukrainian critics, much of Russia’s military hardware is old or outdated, and Russian battlefield gains have resulted from sheer force of numbers and high casualties. Both sides keep the number of dead and injured a secret but are known to have suffered heavy losses.
The Moscow display, which includes US, German and French tanks supplied to Ukraine, came days after the US approved a $61 billion aid package for Kyiv and after Russia made some swift but incremental territorial gains in eastern Ukraine at a time when Kyiv’s forces say they lack ammo and manpower.
Ukraine, whose President Volodymyr Zelensky says it will eventually push Russian forces from its soil, held a similar exhibition along Kyiv’s central boulevard last summer featuring burnt-out husks of Russian tanks and fighting vehicles.
Russia, says the International Institute for Strategic Studies, has itself lost over 3,000 tanks in Ukraine amounting to its entire pre-war active inventory, but has enough lower-quality armored vehicles in storage for years of replacement and says it is now ramping up production of new tanks.
In addition to tanks, British and Australian armored vehicles seized in Ukraine are on display in Moscow along with military hardware made in Turkiye, Sweden, Austria, Finland, South Africa and the Czech Republic.
State TV’s Channel One said the star of the show was a captured American M1 Abrams battle tank, which it said had been taken out by Russian forces in eastern Ukraine using a guided rocket and kamikaze drones.
Clambering over the Abrams holding his microphone, a state TV correspondent told Russians that the tank had been billed in the United States as an indestructible “wonder weapon.”
“But that was all nonsense — look at this — all of its reputation has been destroyed,” he said.

MINNEAPOLIS, USA: A Minnesota man who once fought for the Daesh group in Syria but now expresses remorse for joining a “death cult” and has been cooperating with federal authorities will learn Wednesday how much prison time he faces.
Federal prosecutors have recommended 12 years for Abelhamid Al-Madioum in recognition both of the seriousness of his crime and the help has he given the US and other governments. His attorney says seven years is enough and that Al-Madioum, 27, stopped believing in the group’s extremist ideology years ago.
Al-Madioum was 18 in 2014 when Daesh recruited him. The college student slipped away from his family on a visit to their native Morocco in 2015. Making his way to Syria, he became a soldier for Daesh, until he was maimed in an explosion in Iraq. Unable to fight, he used his computer skills to serve the group. He surrendered to US-backed rebels in 2019 and was imprisoned under harsh conditions.
Al-Madioum returned to the US in 2020 and pleaded guilty in 2021 to providing material support to a designated terrorist organization. According to court filings, he has been cooperating with US authorities and allied governments. The defense says he hopes to work in future counterterrorism and deradicalization efforts.
“The person who left was young, ignorant, and misguided,” Al-Madioum said in a letter to US District Judge Ann Montgomery, who will sentence him.
“I’ve been changed by life experience: by the treachery I endured as a member of Daesh, by becoming a father of four, a husband, an amputee, a prisoner of war, a malnourished supplicant, by seeing the pain and anguish and gnashing of teeth that terrorism causes, the humiliation, the tears, the shame,” he added. “I joined a death cult, and it was the biggest mistake of my life.”
Prosecutors acknowledge that Al-Madioum has provided useful assistance to US authorities in several national security investigations and prosecutions, that he accepted responsibility for his crime and pleaded guilty promptly on his return to the US But they say they factored his cooperation into their recommended sentence of 12 years instead of the statutory maximum of 20 years.
“The defendant did much more than harbor extremist beliefs,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo. “He chose violent action by taking up arms for Daesh.”
A naturalized US citizen, Al-Madioum was among several Minnesotans suspected of leaving the US to join the Daesh group, along with thousands of fighters from other countries worldwide. Roughly three dozen people are known to have left Minnesota to join militant groups in Somalia or Syria. In 2016, nine Minnesota men were sentenced on federal charges of conspiring to join Daesh.
But Al-Madioum is one of the relatively few Americans who’ve been brought back to the US who actually fought for the group. According to a defense sentencing memo, he’s one of 11 adults as of 2023 to be formally repatriated to the US from the conflict in Syria and Iraq to face charges for terrorist-related crimes and alleged affiliations with Daesh. Others received sentences ranging from four years to life plus 70 years.
Al-Madioum grew up in the Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park in a loving and nonreligious family, the defense memo said. He joined Daesh because he wanted to help Muslims who he believed were being slaughtered by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime in that country’s civil war. Daesh recruiters persuaded him “to test his faith and become a real Muslim.”
But he was a fighter for less than two months before he lost his right arm below the elbow in the explosion that also left him with two badly broken legs and other severe injuries. He may still require amputation of one leg, the defense says.
While recuperating in 2016, he met his first wife Fatima, an Daesh widow who already had a son and bore him another in 2017. They lived in poverty and under constant airstrikes. He was unable to work, and his stipend from Daesh stopped in 2018. They lived in a makeshift tent, the defense says.
He married his second wife, Fozia, in 2018. She also was a Daesh widow and already had a 4-year-old daughter. They had separated by early 2019. He heard later she and their daughter together had died. The first wife also is dead, having been shot in front of Al-Madioum by either rebel forces or an Daesh fighter in 2019, the defense says.
The day after that shooting, he walked with his sons and surrendered to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which held him under conditions the defense described as “heinous” for 18 months until the FBI returned him to the US
As for Al-Madioum’s children, the defense memo said they were eventually found in a Syrian orphanage and his parents will be their foster parents when they arrive in the US.