A video of a company of soldiers manually pushing an Il-76MD military transport aircraft has taken social networks by storm. Many commentators speculated that they were trying to "start the plane with a push," but a former pilot and author of the Fighterbomber channel explained that this was fake.
The footage shows servicemen lining up along the fuselage and pulling the 92-ton Il-76MD into its parking spot. Online, this was interpreted as an attempt to start the engines without ground equipment.
You can start a plane like that, but you need to push it forward. And even then, only if it's a helicopter. There, a worm gear transmits torque from the wheels to the rotor. Here, they're just putting the plane in its parking spot. Parking it, basically.
It should be noted that such transport aircraft start their engines via an auxiliary power unit, not from the movement of the landing gear. Therefore, such "versions" are pure folklore.
It is also worth recalling that the Il-76MD-90A received new domestic PS-90A-76 engines with a thrust of 14.5 tons each, a new wing design, a reinforced chassis, and modified navigation and avionics systems with the PrNPK "Kupol-III-76M(A)".
