Ukraine, Russia Brace for Major Tank Battles

Destroyed Russian tanks outside Kyiv @open sources

The coming months could see major tank battles between Ukraine and Russia as Kyiv has received or is expected to receive some 630+ tanks and 3500+ armored vehicles.

As the Ukraine War inches closer toward its one year mark, Defensemirror.com analyses the type and number of armored vehicles and tanks supplied to Ukraine and how they weigh up against similar fleet of Russia.

How have the tanks and armored vehicles fared in the ongoing war?

The Russian army and airborne forces began the war with 3,000 main battle tanks, while Ukraine had 982, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London think tank.

On February 7, Russian defense ministry said its forces destroyed 7,700 tanks and other armored fighting vehicles.

Meanwhile, a Ukraine government report says it eliminated over 3,255 tanks and 2,250 armored vehicles used by the Russian forces. In addition, as per Oryx, an open source intelligence website, Russia has lost up to half of all its operational tank fleet in the war. The group said this week it has verified 1,000 distinct Russian tank losses in the war. It said a further 544 tanks had been captured by Ukrainian forces, 79 damaged and 65 abandoned.

“Russia started the war with around 3,000 operational tanks … so there is a good chance that Russia has lost one half of (its) usable tanks,” Jakub Janovsky, a military analyst who contributes to the Oryx blog, told CNN.

Janovsky said Moscow had about 4,000 tanks in reserve before the war began. “On paper, Russia still has a lot of tanks, but many were not properly stored and might be hard to reactivate quickly,” he added.

Even assuming they could all be brought into action, Moscow has still lost about 30% of its pre-war tank force, Janovsky said.

The total figure for Russia’s equipment losses – when infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers and other vehicles are added to the tanks – is almost 9,100, Oryx’s website says.

Similar equipment losses of Ukraine’s total 2,934, Oryx says.