A RUSSIAN military court has ordered a soldier to pay US$380,000 in compensation after a 2S7 Pion self-propelled artillery gun fell from his truck and suffered irreparable damage due to not being properly secured.

Contract soldier Nikita Proskurin hit the brakes too hard on his bolster-body truck causing the 46-ton artillery gun he was transporting to fall out and overturn. The incident happened at an unregulated roundabout populated with civilian cars. Only by luck, no one was hurt.

Photos and videos from the site on the outskirts of Magas in the Republic of Ingushetia in Russia’s North Caucasus showed the self-propelled gun sitting upside down in the middle of the road, with a deformed muzzle.

The Pion suffered damage, which “made repair and further use of the self-propelled gun for its intended purpose impossible,” because it wasn’t properly attached to the truck, investigators said.

The driver fixed the hardware to the front part of the semitrailer with a metal chain, but failed to do the same for the rear part as stipulated in transportation rules. As a result, the metal chain at the front couldn’t take the strain and was torn apart.

The Defense Ministry said that Proskurin’s carelessness cost it 24.4 million rubles (around US$380,000) and filed a civil lawsuit against the soldier.

The driver acknowledged his guilt, but asked the garrison court to dismiss the ministry’s lawsuit against him without prejudice.

But the judge ruled otherwise. On Thursday, he found Proskurin guilty of damaging military hardware due to negligence and ordered him to repay the full price of the Pion. The soldier’s personal car was already seized as part of the compensation.

2S7 Pion was designed in the Soviet Union and entered service in 1975, becoming the country’s most powerful conventional artillery gun. The system can fire 203mm shells at a distance of up to 47.5 km, and is capable of using nuclear ammunition.

Earlier this year, another contract soldier, who drove a self-propelled Pantsir-S missile system without a proper license and caused it to overturn, escaped with a fine equal to his monthly salary. The damage was estimated to have been 17 million rubles.

(SD-Agencies)