Ukraine: Decoy weapons exert fake military might and trigger Russian arms wastage

Staff at Ukraine's largest steelmaker, Metinvest, watched in horror last February as their security cameras showed invading Russian forces closing in on their factory. But a lack of defences for their own industrial plants prompted an idea that has since taken on its own momentum: creating a Potemkin army. Metinvest's hope is that the fake weaponry it now makes for the Ukrainian armed forces - tapping into a long military tradition of decoys - is luring Russia into wasting expensive resources destroying it. As Russia invaded, "we dug trenches with our equipment and built fortifications around the plant. But we…