Another Russian tank pulled from the mud
 

How can all that stuff still be operational after 60yrs?

Another Russian Tank Pulled From The Mud - YouTube

I suspect if it was buried in the mud it was cut off from oxygen and did not corrode.

Was that a shell at 5:33? What are the hockey puck looking things by the shells? Mines?

The round things are magazines for the machine gun and a lot of them.

cool vid
 

Nice find,, as the previous psot stated, no oxygen,, covered in mud and chances very cold water kept it from rusting. 76 ? mm shells for cannon,, 7. 62 mm mg 60 rounds /magazines for the Degtyarev machine gun. rate of fire 500 - 600 rpm.,, and it looks like grenades also. During the last part of 45 I beleive that they up gunned the cannon to a higher velocity shell ,, but i cannot verify that the barrel is longer as opposed to a 76 mm . the t 34 /76 had a 76.2mm gun of 41.2 calibres,, muzzle velocity of 2,172 feet per sec. then the next one was a t 34 /85
weight 27 tons, 500 hp diesel, top speed 33mph.

Once you purge the engine, all things considered, you might actually be able to start the engine!

There must be some unusual chemistry in the mud.
Maybe its been frozen solid for 60 years & has now melted. Given there is grass growing there must have been oxygen in the mud. Even if there was no oxygen, inoxic or anaerobic bacteria would have made a meal of it. There are plenty of iron fixing bacteria that in 60 years would have digested it.
Being frozen is the most likely reason for preservation if it has been there any length of time.
Or it has not been there for 60 years. After that time no one would know it was there.
My guess is it was driven in there by some rebels & has been recovered. The tracks should have been seized, that gun would not have been able to be moved. the paint would not sill be on it, electrolysis would be every where.
Would have Probably only been in there a week !!

How did it end up upside-down?

Sixto
87 300D

And also how did they manage to find it and get the cables attached?

Same oddity here regarding the state of preservation.

Russian T70 pulled from a marsh - YouTube

This one was upside down also:

STuG III pulled from a Bog - YouTube

Another clip showed period images and video of tanks under attach as they were ferried on rafts across a lake. I suppose the shelling would capsize the rafts sinking the tanks track side up.

Sixto
87 300D

I wondered if they had been frozen too.

Russian Hurricane pilot
 

There is a website http://warrelcis.eu that has a ton of this stuff but the most surprising is a Russian pilot of a WW@ Lend Lease Hawker Hurricane that crashed in the Swamps around Murmansk and when located and the aircraft excavated, his body was found preserved due to the lack of oxygen and the tannic acid of the swamp water.
His body was supponificated or turned into a type of gelatin soap. You can see the detail of his face and his uniform is perfect. Only his feet are missing where they hit the rudder controls in the cockpit and were cut off.

http://www.warrelics.eu/forum/armour-weapons-aircraft-recovery/hurricane-wreck-pilot-recovery-northern-russia-514/

The Northern areaches of Russia have yealded a huge number of aircraft and armored vehicle recoveries. P-39 Aircobras from the bottom of a lake in very restorable condition (even the tinned USA supplied Meat stored in the plane was in ok shape).

I have seen a lot of this type of recovery from Northern Russia and Siberia on several websites. Since some of the relic hunters now use GPR instead of the old method of driving metal rods down 10 to 20 feet hoping to strike a find, I expect more will be found.

Remember the USSR fought HUGE battles on THEIR territory, in areas that were closed for the next 60 years. Karelia in the Eastern Baltic is still FULL of WW2 sites. The remains of the dead are there as well. If you step off the road into the woods you can still be blown up by land mines.

http://www.warrelics.eu/forum/battlefield-archaeology/battlefields-north-karelia-ss-nord-division-12909/

In Poland, they find large mass graves in the countryside when digging for a construction project (4000 +) and my co workers tell me the German Autobahn from Germany toPoland was still in the same condition in 1990 as it was in 1945.

And of course parts of Lybia and Algeria are still covered with British and German land mine fields from WW2.

Given the general landscape around the areas where those tanks lay, it doesn't seem like freezing explains it because the plant life seems pretty typical for unfrozen areas of the northern latitudes.

Pretty interesting. Are there videos taken later after the tanks have been cleaned and maybe even started?