Don't Look Now, But Here Are 600 More Tanks Russia Can Return To Front-Line Service

The rusty old T-64s are expensive to repair and hard to support, but aren't totally useless

In 47 months of hard fighting, the Russian armed forces have lost no fewer than 4,300 tanks that analysts have visually confirmed. But the Russians have replaced virtually every single one of them.

They did it in part by building several hundred new T-90M, T-80BV and T-72B3M tanks—either from scratch or on the basis of older T-90, T-80 and T-72 chassis.

But most of the thousands of replacement tanks came from Russia’s vast constellation of storage bases, which before Russia’s wider war on Ukraine held many thousands of old T-55s, T-62s, T-64s, T-72s, T-80s and even a few older T-90s.

Today, basically only the T-64s are left. As recently as this month, there were around 600 of them in storage—and it seemed unlikely the Kremlin would bother reactivating them.

That changed.