Russia's Tank Corps Is Now A Single-Use Force
Stockpiles of old tanks are gone
No, Russia hasn’t run out of tanks. Not even after losing more than 4,000 T-90s, T-80s, T-72s and other tanks in 52 months of hard fighting in Russia’s wider war on Ukraine.
Yes, Russia has lost so many tanks that it can no longer fight the way it fought in the first year of the wider war. Reactivating older stored tanks to help offset losses, the Russians have depleted stockpiles that took decades to build up.
All that is to say, the Russians can’t just hurl armor at enemy defenses anymore—neither in Ukraine nor in some future conflict. The next time Russia loses thousands of tanks in a short period of time, the way it did in Ukraine in 2022 and 2023, those losses will be more or less impossible to make good.
Those are the nuanced conclusions of a new study by one of the closest observers of Russian tank losses and replacements in Ukraine: the analyst Jompy.
