The Economist is not misinformed. Those western analysts might be misinformed, but the Economist isn't. The cages are being called cope cages. Incidental to

The Economist is not misinformed. Those western analysts might be misinformed, but the Economist isn't. The cages are being called cope cages. Incidental to that, I'm not so sure the analyists are actually wrong. Most of the cope cages look a lot like statistical slat armor to me; e.g. designed to disable AT shaped charges, but utterly ineffective at stopping burning petrol from covering the top of the turret. Molotovs break open on these slats, they don't bounce off. Furthermore, at least some of the cope cages have been augmented with sandbags piled up on top. If they were meant to shield the tank and crew from burning petrol, they'd get more mileage out of sheet metal than sandbags. If anything, these cope cages turn into BBQ grills for Russian tankers trying to bail out.