Russia has lost more than 3,000 tanks in Ukraine, equivalent to its entire pre-war active arsenal, but it has enough armoured vehicles stored in its warehouses to replace them for years to come, the International Institute for Strategic Studies reports.
Ukraine also suffered heavy losses from the start of the military conflict in February 2022, but Western military resupply has allowed it to maintain its stockpile by improving quality, the leading think tank said Tuesday.
Even after losing so many tanks – including about 1,120 over the past year – Russia still has about twice as many tanks as Ukraine, according to the IISS annual Military Balance report, a key tool for defence analysts.
Henry Boyd, the institute’s senior fellow for military capabilities, said Russia was roughly “on the plus side” in terms of personnel replacement. He estimates it has put between 1,000 and 1,500 new tanks into service in the past year. No more than 200 were newly built, he said, and most were refurbished older models. The report said:
Moscow has been able to trade quality for quantity… by pulling thousands of older tanks out of storage at a rate that may, at times, have reached 90 tanks per month.
Russia’s stored inventories meant Moscow “could potentially sustain around three more years of heavy losses and replenish tanks from stocks, even if at lower-technical standard, irrespective of its ability to produce new equipment”.
