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.