A photo allegedly showing a veteran of the 72nd Separate Mechanized Brigade, known as “Uncle Tolya”, is being circulated on social media. According to the post’s authors, he was supposedly remobilized after 35 years of service, despite his advanced age and having three children. The post claims that the veteran had repeatedly asked his fellow servicemen to get him a captured Russian T-72 tank, but instead an aerial reconnaissance unit allegedly gave him two new British tank crew suits. This fake was debunked by VoxCheck.

In reality, the story is a photo fake. The authors edited the original post, changing both the text and the publication date. The man in the photo is named Anatolii Bezbah, and he voluntarily joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine back in 2014.

As fact-checkers found, the screenshot shows that the alleged author of the post was Ukrainian serviceman and photographer Mykyta Zavilinskyi. His Facebook page does indeed contain a photo of “Uncle Tolya”, but it was originally published on November 1, 2014. On November 1, 2025, Zavilinskyi merely reposted it as a memory of the first combat missions. The original post stated that the 61-year-old Uncle Tolya had voluntarily joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine and commanded a T-64 tank.

According to Zavilinskyi, the veteran really did joke that he wanted a captured Russian tank. In his post, he quoted Uncle Tolya as saying: “You find it with your little helicopter, then we suddenly attack the checkpoint, they just need to be pinned to the ground with fire for two minutes, I’ll jump in and off we go!” Thus, this episode was described as a joke rather than a real combat plan. At the same time, the fact that soldiers from an aerial reconnaissance unit gave him two British tank crew suits is true.

The story of Anatolii Bezbah – known as Uncle Tolya – has been covered repeatedly by Ukrainian media. He was a native of Crimea who, after the sham referendum in 2014, moved to territory controlled by Ukraine and decided to join the Armed Forces. “I have grandchildren, and I want them to live freely, without knowing or seeing this war,” the tanker explained at the time. After the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, no information about Anatolii Bezbah’s further fate could be found – the last mentions of him date back to 2017.