AN IN-DEPTH LOOK AT SOME OF THE LATEST RELEASES
M
iniArt, another Kyivbased company, are Ukraine’s largest model manufacturing company and, like others, their usually prodigious output has been affected by the war. To date, they have largely avoided releases of contemporary AFVs but that will change with their release of the first 1/35-scale kit of the Ukrainian BTR-4E Early (ref. 37001). The BTR-4 was a private initiative designed and developed in 2006 by the Kharkiv Morozov Machine Building Design Bureau and subsequently sold to Indonesia, Iraq and Ukraine. It saw action in Iraq against Islamic State insurgents in 2013 and the following year was first used by the Ukrainians in the Anti-Terrorist Operation in Donbas. Subsequently, it has become an important component of the Ukrainian mechanised infantry battalions, with some 200 in service, and it is currently engaged against Russian forces. It is armed with a 30mm autocannon and four Konkurs or Baryer ATGMs.