Russia shows D-74 towed gun in Kurakhove sector. Where did it get these rare guns from?

A Russian propaganda report has appeared in the open access. In it, the Russian army shows how 122-mm guns of the D-74 type are used in battles in the Kurakhove direction.

At the same time, it is demonstrated that the Russian forces use North Korean copies of the Soviet OF-472 shells to fire from these D-74s, which the Russian defense industry is most likely not capable of producing. At the same time, the very presence of this footage once again raises the question of where exactly the Russians could have obtained these D-74s.

It is worth recalling that for the first time, the D-74 towed guns were noticed at the disposal of the Russian occupation army only in October 2024. And already at that time the question arose as to where the Russians could have gotten these guns from. Since according to available data, the Russian army did not have D-74s in its storage warehouses, moreover, it was believed that all guns of this type were sold for export before the beginning of the 1980s, in particular to North Korea.

Amid this, a version arose that Russia could have received these D-74s as "aid" from the DPRK, in particular to replenish the artillery losses. Moreover, according to available data, the previously mentioned 238th Artillery Brigade of the Southern District of the Russian Armed Forces had at its disposal towed howitzers Msta-B.

But on the other hand, here we should not exclude the option that these same D-74s were taken from the storage warehouses of the Russian army, but here we are talking about "unaccounted" stocks, Defense Express notes.

In other words, a certain number of D-74s could have been in storage since Soviet times, but the Russians did not mention these artillery systems in their public data, which in turn created a corresponding information vacuum.

On the other hand, we should not ignore this aspect - these same D-74s were once manufactured by China under the designation Type-59, and here we should not exclude the option that the Russians can also fire from guns of Chinese origin.

The characteristics of the D-74 itself, the production of which started back in the 1950s: weight - 5.5 tons, rate of fire - 6-7 rounds per minute, maximum range - up to 23.9 kilometers, crew - up to 10 people.