Desperate Putin calls up movie prop tanks to use in his invasion of Ukraine

Vladimir Putin has been forced to call up dozens of creaking T-55 tanks used by Russia’s Hollywood as props in war films.

The army has raided the Mosfilm warehouses in its desperation to invade Ukraine.

Desperate Russian president Putin thanked movie chief Karen Shakhnazarov for the outdated Cold War military hardware during a Kremlin meeting.

‘We have handed over to the [Russian] Armed Forces 28 T-55 tanks, eight PT-76 tanks, six BMPs (combat vehicles) and eight tractors [that] we had stored at the military-technical base,’ Shakhnazarov said.

‘I found out that there was a need, contacted the Ministry of Defence and they took these vehicles. In short, these are our results.’

Putin acknowledged the importance of the contribution of the geriatric military equipment. ‘We are proud of Mosfilm – thank you,’ he said.

Shakhnazarov branded the move ‘charitable assistance’ by the Russian film industry to Putin’s war.

The T-55 is a Soviet-made main battle tank first produced in the late 1950s.

‘We have handed over to the [Russian] Armed Forces 28 T-55 tanks, eight PT-76 tanks, six BMPs and eight tractors [that] we had stored at the military-technical base,’ Karen Shakhnazarov (left) told Vladimir Putin (right)

Putin’s army has called up creaking tanks and armoured vehicles belonging to Russia’s Hollywood, known as Mosfilm, which were used in war films

It was known Russia had raided its vaults of pensioned-off tanks – and some held in museums – but the revelation about using the film industry’s collection of old crocks is new.

Shakhnazarov, 72, is a prominent Russian filmmaker, producer, and screenwriter.

He has been the Director General of Mosfilm, the country’s largest and oldest film studio – aka Russian Hollywood – since 1998.

He publicly backed Putin’s grab of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

Ukraine mocked the use of film props, many of which were decommissioned from the Red Army’s Soviet era stocks.

‘Having emptied the warehouses of Soviet weapons, the Russian army has taken into service fake armoured vehicles from the 1950s from the warehouses of Mosfilm,’ reported telegram channel Pravda Gerashchenko.

It branded Shakhnazarov a ‘part time propagandist’ who ‘announced such a generous donation during a personal audience with Putin in the Kremlin’.