Kamysh (Kamush): Russia’s Tiger-Stripe Pattern for Special Units

In Russian, камыш — kamysh — is not a military word. It is the reed that grows at the water’s edge: tall, stiff, topped with the brown seed head an English speaker would call a cattail. That a waterside plant should give its name to camouflage is not in itself strange, since Russian and Soviet camouflage is full of nicknames taken from the landscape. What is strange is how many different prints have been made to answer to the same word.

There is no official Russian pattern called Kamysh. The word is a nickname, and it has travelled: it has been attached to a striated print that appeared in the early 1990s, to a quite different figure said to resemble reeds, to a grey pattern sold to hunters and security companies, and — in some Russian sources — even to the digital uniforms of the federal prison service. Western dealers have added a second layer of confusion by turning the nickname into a product name, and by reaching for an English term, “tiger stripe”, to describe it.

What follows separates those threads. It describes the two drawings that most often sit behind the name — one from about 1993, one from 1995 — explains how they differ, lists the names each has carried, and sets out what is actually documented about the units that wore them.

One Word, Several Patterns

Set the dealer listings aside and “Kamysh” turns out to cover at least four different things.

The first is a Russian tiger-type design introduced around 1993 in two colourways, green and blue for urban use. This is the print that gave the nickname its currency, and the only one for which the “tiger stripe” description in the title is defensible.

The second is a different drawing altogether: the камышовый рисунок (kamyshovy risunok, “reed figure”), reported to have emerged in 1995 and associated with the MVD Internal Troops, the RUOP and Opnaz units. It is known today as подлесок (podlesok, “underbrush”) — a later name for the same drawing rather than a separate pattern.

The third is a grey pattern called «Серый камыш» (seryi kamysh, “grey reed”). A Russian popular encyclopaedia of camouflage describes it as an autumn–winter design with a horizontal figure, worn by hunters and by security services — that is, civil and private-security use rather than a military issue.

The fourth sense is the least expected. According to Camopedia, some Russian sources call the digital-print uniforms of the FSIN, the federal prison service, “digital reeds”. Nothing about a pixel grid resembles the 1993 stripes, and that is exactly the point: a word applied both to a striped print and to a digital uniform is doing the work of a description, not of a designation.

The 1993 Tiger: Vityaz, OMON and a Blue Urban Colourway

The design that gave the word its currency is, in the English-language literature, a Russian version of tiger stripe. Camopedia dates it to about 1993, gives two colourways — green, and blue for urban use — and names its first wearers: the special-purpose units of the MVD, among them Vityaz, and OMON. From there it spread across a range of MVD special units.

Russian-language sources describe the same design in comparable terms. An entry in the Russian list of military camouflage patterns is headed «Витязь / Камыш» and describes a print developed for the special-purpose troops of the MVD, in summer and winter versions; a Russian popular encyclopaedia of uniforms, archived from forma-odezhda.ru, says much the same. The two agree on the unit category and on the seasonal cuts.

The nicknames attached to the design are older than the design itself. Tigr (tiger) and Тень — Ten, “shadow” — were already in circulation for military camouflage prints before this one appeared. Kamysh, “reed”, describes the structure of the print: long, irregular, vertically oriented bands of the kind found in reeds and tall grass. Russian material treats the word as a common noun, a description; Western catalogues capitalise it into a proper name, and the capital letter does much of the damage. Camopedia records the two prints as “more commonly referred to as Kamysh (Cane), or as Tigr (tiger) and Тень (Ten) (shadow)”.

One period label is worth keeping in mind for older Russian references: some Soviet-era literature called the design ПФО, piatnisto-fioletovoe obmundirovanie — “spotted violet uniform”. It is a name of its time rather than a service designation, and it survives mainly in Russian collecting circles.

The 1995 Kamyshovy Risunok: Reed Figure, Later Called Podlesok

The second design shares the nickname and nothing else. Camopedia introduces it in a single entry: “The MVD камышовый рисунок (Kamyshovy risunok) or ‘reed figure’ pattern emerged in 1995 and has seen service with MVD Internal Troops Divisions, RUOP & Opnaz units. The pattern is today referred to as podlesok (underbrush).” It was produced in green and in blue for urban use, and later in a grey version that the same source calls SKOLM — “night owl”.

The Russian entry for «Подлесок» adds details of a different kind. It dates the pattern to the 1990s, records it as created at NPO Spetsmaterialy as an alternative to the VSR-93 for adoption by the MVD, and notes a deliberate design intention: the vertical bands were meant to make the wearer look taller, an effect chosen for the psychological weight it carries in an arrest.

Beyond that, the published sources thin out. A Russian collectors’ account dates the grey and green prints to a Russian manufacturer in 1995, taken up respectively by OMON and the Internal Troops as replacements for the «Амёба» (Amoeba) of 1991 — plausible in outline, but an account rather than a document, and a dating that sits uneasily beside the earlier date given for the striped design.

Two things follow from the material, and both matter to anyone trying to make sense of a garment. The 1993 striped design and the 1995 reed figure should not be merged into a single lineage: different drawings, different dates, one shared nickname meaning “reed”. And the relationship between the green «камыш» sold in Russian catalogues and the 1993 design described in the reference literature is not established anywhere in the sources.

Two Drawings, One Name

The differences between the two designs are easiest to hold in mind as a short list.

• Date. About 1993 for the striped design; 1995 for the reed figure.
• Names. Kamysh, Tigr and Ten attach to the earlier print; камышовый рисунок, Podlesok and SKOLM to the later one.
• Units. MVD special-purpose units and OMON for the earlier print; Internal Troops divisions, RUOP and Opnaz for the later.
• Origin. The 1995 reed figure is recorded as an NPO Spetsmaterialy design offered as an alternative to the VSR-93; no origin is documented for the 1993 print.
• Colour. Both were produced in green and in urban blue; the later design acquired a grey version under a nickname of its own.
• Shared. A single word meaning “reed”, and a Western habit of treating both prints as one pattern.

The Names, One by One

Because the confusion here is nominal before it is historical, the vocabulary is worth setting out plainly.

• камыш / Kamysh — “reed, cane”. Not an official designation: in collector and encyclopaedia usage it names the circa-1993 Russian tiger-type print, and in other sources it labels quite different prints.
• Kamush — the same word in another Latin spelling, common in Western listings. No separate meaning and no official status, though the difference in spelling leads some buyers to treat the two as separate products.
• «Тигр» (Tigr) and «Тень» (Ten) — “tiger” and “shadow”: the further nicknames recorded for the 1993 design.
• Камышовый рисунок (kamyshovy risunok) — “reed figure”: the design reported from 1995, associated with the MVD Internal Troops, RUOP and Opnaz.
• Подлесок (Podlesok) — “underbrush”: the name by which the 1995 reed figure is referred to today, and also the name recorded for the Belarusian border-guard print known colloquially as Kamysh.
• СКОЛМ (SKOLM) — “night owl”: the later grey version of the reed figure.
• «Серый камыш» (seryi kamysh) — “grey reed”: a grey print recorded as used by security structures, described in Russian material as an autumn–winter pattern with a horizontal figure.
• ПФО (PFO) — piatnisto-fioletovoe obmundirovanie, “spotted violet uniform”: a period label for the 1993 design found in older literature.
• «Амёба» (Amoeba) — a Soviet pattern presented in Russian material as the print this generation of designs replaced; the datings given for it do not agree across sources.
• «Ночь-91М» (Noch-91M) — not a pattern name but a garment line: a suit sold by the Russian manufacturer ANA for the special units of the Internal Troops, OMON and SOBR.
• “Digital reeds” — the nickname some Russian sources give the digital-print uniforms of the FSIN, the federal prison service, a design with no graphic relation to the 1993 stripes.

Colours and Variants: Green, Blue, Grey

For the 1993 design the reference literature gives two colourways: green, and blue for urban use. The Russian list and the encyclopaedia behind it add a second axis — season — with summer and winter versions of the same drawing. The blue urban print is the one Western collectors usually mean when they say “Kamysh”, and it is the version seen most often in service photographs of OMON units from 2006 onwards.

For the 1995 reed figure, Camopedia gives green and blue produced originally, and later a grey version called SKOLM. The Russian list carries «Серый камыш» as an entry of its own, a Russian pattern used by security structures, and the encyclopaedia behind the Russian material describes a grey print with a horizontal figure worn by hunters and security services. Whether that grey print is a colourway of the reed figure, a separate branch of the family, or a broad label used by manufacturers is not settled in the published sources — which is why a grey “Kamysh” is the hardest version to place.

Colour is the least stable thing about printed camouflage. Camopedia notes that the colour of the 1993 design varies “depending on the fabric and manufacturer”, and the same drawing can look pale grey on one jacket and dark blue-teal on another depending on cloth, light and printing batch. Names such as “grey reed” or “Kamysh Blue” are descriptions, not specifications: no shade references, print-repeat measurements or garment lists are published for either design.

Who Wore It

Unit attributions are where camouflage writing slips most easily from description into assertion, so the documented and the circulating are worth keeping apart.

Documented. For the circa-1993 design: the special-purpose units of the MVD, with Vityaz named, and OMON, with use later spreading across a range of MVD special units. For the 1995 reed figure: MVD Internal Troops divisions, RUOP and Opnaz. In photographs, the blue wavy print is documented on OMON personnel in Moscow and Saint Petersburg between 2006 and 2012.

Circulating without support. Retail copy sometimes presents a Kamysh print as widely used by Internal Troops, OMON, SOBR and spetsnaz reconnaissance teams, or as having been created for Russian naval infantry. The naval-infantry claim runs against the reference literature, which places the design inside the MVD and its special units; the wider attributions appear in no reference source. A seller’s line about which units “widely use” a pattern is a sales argument, not a record.

One identification caution belongs here as well. Rastr, a print introduced in 2004 that the reference literature describes as closely based on the reed figure, was worn by the same kinds of units in the same years, so a photograph of blue-grey wavy camouflage on police or Internal Troops personnel does not by itself settle which print is shown.

“Tiger Stripe”: A Name in Two Languages

“Tiger stripe” is an English term. It was coined for the vertical-striped, non-issue camouflage that appeared in Indochina in the 1960s and became associated with special operations, and English-language reference material uses it for the 1993 Russian design as a description of the family the print belongs to. It was never a Russian service name.

Russian-language accounts give the “tiger” a different parentage. The Russian encyclopaedia entry calls these prints variations of “tiger” camouflage, and traces the word to the identity of the unit that wore it — Vityaz, and the literary reference in its name, The Knight in the Tiger’s Skin. On that reading the tiger is inherited from a unit’s own story rather than borrowed from another country’s pattern.

The two explanations can both be true. What no source demonstrates is descent: there is no documented transfer of an American tiger-stripe print, or of a French or Portuguese lizard print, into Soviet or Russian service. A resemblance between striated prints of different countries — the Lizard family is the obvious example — is convergence rather than ancestry, and the retail text that asserts a French Lizard inspiration for the Russian design is repeating a sales line. The honest reading of the 1993 print is that its name has two origins and its drawing has no documented ancestor.

The earlier Soviet leaf prints — KLMK and «Берёзка» — belong to a different family and a different naming tradition, covered in our article on Soviet leaf camouflage, and the same applies to the VSR-93 family with which the 1995 reed figure was in competition.

Beyond Russia: Belarus, the Sahara and the “Digital Reeds”

Three outlying cases show how far the word travels, and all three are about the name rather than about Russian issue.

Belarus. A pattern adopted by the Belarusian border guards is known colloquially as Kamysh (reeds) or Podlesok (undergrowth). Whether it descends from a Russian print or was simply named after one is not recorded by the source.

Western Sahara. Since around 2018, a lizard-type design worn by members of the Sahrawi People’s Liberation Army — the armed forces of the Polisario Front — has been described as “almost precisely the same as the Russian Kamysh or ‘cane’ pattern”. Russian export, local copy or plain convergence: the sources do not say.

The prison service. In recent years, some Russian sources have called the digital-print uniforms of the FSIN “digital reeds”, apparently including OSN units at Perm and Novosibirsk. A pixel grid and a 1990s striped print sharing one nickname is the clearest demonstration that «Камыш» works as a popular description rather than a design name. The FSIN’s digital prints are a separate matter from the armed forces’ own move to digital camouflage, which is the subject of our article on EMR (Digital Flora).

How to Identify a Kamysh

Most of the confusion a buyer meets is nominal rather than graphical, so the practical advice is mostly about labels and expectations.

• The spelling varies. “Kamysh” and “Kamush” are one Russian word in two Latin spellings: “kamysh” follows the standard transliteration of the vowel ы — a central vowel with no English equivalent — while “kamush” writes what the word sounds like to an English ear. One search term, not two products.
• The word does several jobs at once. In a single catalogue it may label a 1993-type striped print, a 1995 reed figure, a grey civil print, or a garment cut. Product names are not pattern names — «Ночь-91М», for instance, is a suit made for the special units of the Internal Troops, OMON and SOBR rather than a pattern.
• Judge the print at close range, and ask which colourway. Both designs are built from elongated, irregular, vertically oriented elements closer to reeds than to the leopard-spot structure of a wartime tiger stripe, and at a distance a blue-grey Kamysh garment reads as a soft mid-tone. Expect the same drawing to look different on different cloth.
• Treat unit-issue claims with caution. “Used by spetsnaz”, “worn by the naval infantry” and similar lines come from sales copy far more often than from any record; the reference literature is a great deal narrower.

FAQ

What does Kamysh mean in Russian?

“Reed” — the waterside plant. In camouflage usage it is a nickname rather than a designation, and it has been applied both to the circa-1993 striped print and to the 1995 reed figure.

Is Kamysh the same as tiger stripe?

Only loosely. English reference material calls the circa-1993 design a Russian version of tiger stripe, which its stripes make reasonable, but “tiger stripe” is a Western term born in Indochina and was never a Russian service name. The other design carrying the nickname, the 1995 kamyshovy risunok, is not a striped tiger print at all.

What is the difference between Kamysh and Podlesok?

Podlesok is the modern name for the 1995 reed figure: the same drawing under a later nickname rather than a separate pattern.

Why is Kamysh also spelled Kamush?

Because Russian «камыш» has no single settled Latin spelling: “kamysh” follows the standard transliteration of ы, while “kamush” spells what the word sounds like to an English ear. The difference is orthographic, not a difference of pattern.