When the Soviets came out with the T-72 tank in 1973 – and after a prolonged fight within the Politburo and Ministry of Defence to put the tank into production – it did not take long before Soviet customer states to include the Warsaw Pack began asking for their own versions of the new tank. In 1978 they began to offer the export models of the tank as the Object 172M-Eh (for Ehksport) series. But they also did not want to offer the best versions of the tank so two model lines were developed: one for Warsaw Pact members and one for third world customers.
The initial models closely matched the original T-72 but with some changes such as one-piece glacis armour vice the three-layer (steel-fiberglass-steel) and changes to the NBC protection; the Warsaw Pact ones got reduced levels compared to the Soviet domestic tanks and the third world ones were stripped out.
In 1981 a new model, the T-72M, was offered with the Object 172M-Eh3 going to the Pact and the –Eh4 to the third world. This was also the first one offered for foreign production in the CSSR and Poland. Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia also purchased rights to build the T-72M variant in their own countries. Once again, they had a different design of turret and glacis armour (essentially monolithic and not composite) and the Eh4 lacked full Soviet NBC protection. (It remained with the Pact Eh3 vehicles as they would be considered to be fighting side by side with Soviet tanks on the same battlefield and required similar levels of protection.) These tanks did have the laser range finder and modified fire controls systems but were not fully identical to those of the T-72A.
Amusing Hobby from China produced a T-72M/M1 kit which while interesting (it had a full interior) missed the mark with both versions of the tank due to problems with the turret. Now Das Werk, another new company, has offered a corrected version of the T-72M tank. According to its website, Das Werk (roughly The Factory in English) is a German company founded in 2017 who partners with foreign manufactures and offers engineering support to provide accurate kits. This kit is an improved version of the earlier model with a new turret shell and details as well as a new PE fret.