In 2013, Russia adopted the BTR-82A as the future of its mechanized infantry. A modern 8x8 wheeled armoured personnel carrier with a stabilized 30mm autocannon, thermal optics, satellite navigation, and a diesel engine that could start in minus forty degrees Celsius. It was supposed to lead the sweep into Kyiv in February 2022. Within three years, over 1,000 of them had been destroyed, captured, or abandoned across Ukraine. Russian soldiers started calling it meat delivery. The factory kept building them anyway.

The BTR-82A was the fourth deep modernization of a Soviet hull first adopted in 1985. The engineers at the Arzamas Machine Building Plant upgraded the engine, the cannon, the optics, and the radios. They left the armour at ten millimeters. They left the fuel tanks in the rear hull. They left the side doors that forced infantry to dismount directly into enemy fire. Hostomel, Brovary, Mariupol, Vuhledar, Avdiivka, Krynky, Kursk. Every major battle of the invasion consumed them by the dozen. Colonels died in them. A Major General of the Russian Navy died beside one. A nineteen year old prisoner summed it up in four words. We were sent as meat.

This is the story of the most destroyed armoured vehicle of the twenty first century, and the doctrine that keeps sending men inside it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2bBMxUM9UU&t=10

It is important to understand that part of why Ukrainian small drone attacks on russian armor have been so effective is because russia has refused to stop bullshitting with their armor design for decades. This isn’t to take away from the skill and innovation of Ukrainian UAV operators but rather to add another dimension to why it was such a wise strategic move for Ukraine to invest heavily in drones for antitank capability.

A Browning 0.50 cal machine gun penetrates the armor of a BTR-82a.

TL;DR the BTR-82a has shit armor unless you view it exclusively as a scout amphibious vehicle not meant for direct combat.