Ukraine claims massive Russian tank losses: Truth behind the numbers
The Ukrainians have claimed the destruction of 8,000 Russian tanks since the war began. We now present the types of constructions the Russians have lost most frequently.
1:21 PM EDT, June 21, 2024
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense has boasted about the destruction of up to 8,000 Russian tanks. This is significantly higher than the 3,153 visually verified wrecks cataloged by groups such as oryxspioenkop. The discrepancy arises because only a portion of the destroyed Russian equipment has been captured in publicly released recordings.
Meanwhile, the actual number of destroyed Russian tanks may be more than twice as high. Furthermore, even if the Ukrainians are inflating Russian losses for propaganda purposes, their numbers are likely closer to reality than the data released by Russia.
The russian stock of modern tanks is a shadow of what it was before 2022
According to the report The Military Balance, Russia's armored potential at the time of the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 included about 3,000 tanks and an additional 7,000 tanks from the T-72 family, with another 3,000 held in the mobilization reserve.
Due to their losses in Ukraine, the Russians are massively retrieving armored equipment from storage, as evidenced by the destroyed units. According to Oryx's list, the Russians have lost at least 826 T-72B3 and B3M tanks, which comprised a significant portion of their relatively modern tanks at the front. Before the war, Russia had about 1,720 of these units in total.
The T-72B3 tanks are a light modernization of Soviet-era T-72B tanks from 2011. This upgrade mainly involved installing the modern Sosna-U fire control system with a French thermal imaging camera and adapting the loader to handle longer Svieniec shells. Additionally, consumable elements were replaced during the rebuild, and the reactive armor was standardized to Kontakt-5.
More significant changes have been applied to the T-72B3M tanks produced since 2016. For example, the commander received a panoramic sight, enabling the crew to operate in hunter-killer mode, where the commander can direct the gun to the target faster than the gunner based on his commands. Additionally, these tanks were fitted with a new two-layer Relikt reactive armor. The Russians have also lost at least 97 units of the latest T-90M tanks, numbered over 100 units considering wartime production.
The current Russian armored potential - turning into a historical reenactment of the USSR
The Russians quickly began compensating for these losses by refurbishing stored T-72B or older T-72A/AW units, with 451 visually confirmed losses. However, given the global popularity of the T-72 family of tanks, it soon became apparent that the stored units might have been in poor technical condition or had been looted for spare parts. Consequently, there was a rapid increase in the presence and destruction of T-80BW tanks on the front, with the Ukrainians ultimately destroying at least 569 units.
The Russians even sent T-54/55 tanks, T-62 tanks, and the first T-72 Ural tanks to the front. Many experts estimate that the Russian repair base inherited from the USSR will be exhausted by the end of 2025 or 2026, making it impossible for Russia to replace these losses quantitatively. For this reason, ensuring arms supplies to Ukraine for at least another two years remains a critical issue.
