The military train lurched into the rail depot at Kursk on a recent afternoon, carrying more snow-dusted main battle tanks, self-propelled artillery, and other heavy weapons to within a few hours’ drive by car of the Ukrainian border.
At the depot, the flatbed railcars parked between heavy containers carrying chemical products, leaving them visible only from a small pedestrian footbridge overhead. There, military police with red armbands kept watch as locals looked on curiously at the latest arrivals in Russia’s vast military buildup.
