Ukraine
He needed a push start, you can the moment he popped the clutch....
Yes I can see when he revved the engine creating all that black smoke, and then popped the clutch. But that doesn't mean they were starting the engine that way.
Push starting is easy for highway geared vehicles on firm ground, more difficult in mud.
With rubber tire farm tractors it's more difficult due to the very low speed gear reduction. When one has the tractor moving and pops the clutch it tends to skid the drive wheel along the road instead of turning the engine.
If one has a differential lock they can engage that helps because that locks two drive wheels together. But one still has the problem that in order to turn the engine a high road gear must be used, and that creates a situation where the engine might start, but it's stalled out in the first moments it is running. One has to be quick on the clutch and get it just right, popping the clutch and then pressing it back in at just the right moment so as to not stall the engine before one can get it going.
Tracked crawlers would be even worse insofar as their low speed gear reduction. I've never attempted it. Maybe it could be done on firm ground, but I would doubt it if the tracks are in mud.
Besides the black smoke was made after the throttle had been increased to rev the engine before the clutch was popped, and then once the engine was under load the exhaust quickly cleared up. Pouring the coals to it is what we used to call that. It's kind of hard on the drive train but sometimes it is necessary to not burn the clutch slipping it too much when stuck.
My experience was as a kid in muddy farm fields with various farm tractors and a pair of old D-6 cat's we used as tractors for plowing to minimize soil compaction which a rubber tired tractor would do during the moist plowing season.
Our D-6 cats and largest rubber tired diesel tractor, a really large Johnny Popper John Deere tractor, had little gasoline starting engines which were electric start but could be hand cranked if necessary.
Then they would run and with their exhaust and cooling antifreeze warm up the big diesel engine, and after being warmed up would turn over the big engines to start them. We could get those engines going when it was minus 20 and the snow had drifted up 5 or 6 feet high, and then use them to push snow so the cows could be fed with a 4 wheel drive pickup. Or so we could drive to town.
We'd plow the county road as well as our own field roads.