I used to have an Osprey Elite series book called something like Tank War Central Europe (I'll have to look it up later) and I'm pretty sure that I remember some fairly distinctive tactical ID markings on armor from both sides of the hypothetical conflict. Unfortunately, when the Cold War was put to bed, I offloaded the book and it's out of print now.
Anyway, I've seen a few photos of T-34s in Wermacht service back in WWII and the only markings they carried were German crosses painted on the turrets. They were, however, considerably larger than the crosses borne by German-made tanks. I've also seen pics of German tanks with swastika flags draped on the turret to make it less likely that a Stuka would mistake it for a Soviet tank and dive-bomb it.
It's definitely a trade off between easy ID/avoiding blue-on-blue and concealability.
Being that a lot of AFVs by 2000 would have been recycled (i.e. used by multiple units/sides throughout their service lives), I'm not sure folks would trouble themselves too much with updating tactical ID markings. It seems like the proper paints would be pretty hard to come by c.2000. I think they'd probably keep it pretty simple (i.e. what we see in the vehicle guides).
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