Russia Is Desperate For Tanks. Is It Desperate Enough To Use T-64s?
642 of Russia’s last remaining 2,500 tanks are T-64s Russia can't easily use without massive investment.
Desperate to replenish its depleted mechanized regiments, the Kremlin is pulling its last 2,500 tanks from long-term storage. But there’s a problem with more than 600 of them.
They’re T-64s. It’s a tank model that only a few Russian formations currently use—and they’re all former formations of Russia’s puppet “republics” in eastern Ukraine that the Russian army absorbed by early 2023.
It’s not clear whether the Russian army is willing to create the infrastructure to support the roughly 642 of the 40-ton, three-person T-64s that are still sitting in a pair of Russian storage yards decades after the army discarded them in favor of similar—but newer—T-80s.
“We should probably discard the remaining 642 T-64s,” open-source analyst Jompy concluded after a recent analysis of Russian tank stocks. “Whatever few are pulled then and now, here and there, it’s most likely they’re either scrapped or cannibalized to get spare parts for the few that former DL/PR forces still operate in Ukraine.”
The DL/PR is a reference to the armies of the Russian-backed “Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics” in eastern Ukraine, controlled by Russian since 2014 and marked in dark red on the map above. The Russian army took over full command of the regiments of its puppet “republics” in early 2023.
The former DL/PR formations still retain some unique qualities and equipment including T-64s, which were built in Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine—and which are still the main tanks of the Ukrainian armed forces, albeit in heavily upgraded versions.
The T-64 features a different auto-loader for its 125-mm main gun compared to most Russian tanks, which are variants of the simpler T-72. This means separate maintenance infrastructure, spare parts supply chains, and specialized training—all of which the Russian army abandoned decades ago when it standardized on T-72 and T-80 variants.
Read the rest at Euromaidan Press.
