The War In Ukraine Is the Last In Which Soviet Armor Will Fight

It is not so much that tanks are obsolete, though that is still being determined by drone warfare developments on both sides, but that the Kremlin has almost completely exhausted the stockpiled inventory it had accumulated over eight decades before invading Ukraine. 

While some remain to be upgraded, their value had diminished in light of the contemporary battlefield's challenges. JL

Jompy reports in Fronts.Co:

This will be the last great war fought with Soviet-era armor. The Ukraine invasion war’s opening months were characterized by losses we can politely call 'eyewatering' That Russia had started deploying ancient T-54/55s in summer 2023 was proof of how far they had to reach to keep their formations equipped, and even then they were frequently understrength. (Now) armor is) still being used, but rarely and almost never in the amounts it used to be; a few tanks and IFVs trying small pushes, or tanks used as APCs to transport infantry. The loss of the vast Soviet stockpiles means the capability to quickly regenerate after attritional warfare won’t be there anymore for Russia. They’ll have to change their approach to warfare, not being able to throw massive armored pushes at the enemy anymore nor waste any piece of equipment

Since February 2022 we’ve likely all heard the (in)famous phrase: ‘Russia has run out of equipment’. Most of the time, the claim is made about armored vehicles, particularly tanks. But is that really the case? Well, not exactly.

To truly grasp the nuances here, we first have to understand where the Russian fleet of stored tanks stood prewar. When the Soviet Union finally collapsed in December 1991, Moscow had been presiding over a war economy for decades. The Soviet Army fielded dozens of thousands of tanks, on top of several times that number of other armored vehicles such as infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), armored personnel carriers (APCs), artillery, both self-propelled (SPGs) and towed, engineering vehicles, and so-on.

Inevitably, these huge stockpiles of heavy equipment were inherited by post Soviet states. However, for obvious reasons, the bulk of it ended up in the hands of the new Russian Federation. Russia, knee deep in their 1990s economic and political crisis, was not able to properly field and maintain as much military hardware as the Soviets did, so both for economic reasons and to comply with the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), they dismantled, scrapped and in some cases put in storage most of their tanks and other armored equipment.

When this process was over, Russia only retained barely 10-15% of the tank fleet the Soviet Union had possessed right before its end. Not only that, but the collapse of the Soviet war economy and its sphere of influence and the lack of investment meant that a huge share of the Russian defense industry decayed and went bankrupt, including many tank and armor-related design bureaus and manufacturers. In the end, production was limited to a small set of products, such as the new T-90 and BMP-3, mainly to fulfill foreign orders. And even in these cases, Russia relied on selling their equipment in storage to friendly states; offering military equipment at cheap prices has been one of the main tools for Russian diplomacy ever since.

With that in mind, let’s fast forward to February 24th 2022. That day, Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine with the intention of seizing the eastern regions and installing a puppet government in Kyiv. Despite their planning, the Russian army quickly found itself stalled by stiff Ukrainian defenses. Soviet military doctrine, which Russia had maintained in its military thinking, sought to push the enemy through mechanized columns. However, Ukrainian doctrinal changes since the start of the Dombas conflict in 2014, new technological advances such as FPV drones, and arms supplies by NATO and EU states allowed them to nullify for the most part the effectiveness of Russian armored attacks. Russian heavy equipment losses started mounting to levels unseen in a European conflict since the days of the Second World War. In view of this, many started to wonder just how long could Russia keep up these tactics until they depleted their ground forces of anything heavier than a truck. The hard truth is: a long, long time.

It is estimated that the Russian army started this war with around 2,700-3,300 tanks in active service (3,000 being the most common estimate), these active tanks mostly being modernized versions of late Soviet tank designs, such as T-72B3s and T-80BV/BVMs, plus around 280 T-90s (mainly T-90As, as Russia had just started delivering newly designed T-90Ms to their Ground Forces).

But those were just the active tanks, quickly fielded for the invasion by the Ground Forces, Airborne (VDV) and Marines. On top of them, there were up to some 8,500 more tanks of different types, mainly old, obsolete ones, in military storage facilities by 2022, plus circa 20,000 IFVs and APCs: the remains of the huge Soviet-era tank fleet Russia couldn’t afford to maintain in an operational state, but neither scrapped nor sold abroad in order to maintain a ‘fleet-in-being’ that could cheaply replenish any potential tank losses.

While the numbers on paper were large, though, these storage bases were often located in the heart of Siberian territory, with the equipment parked outdoors with no protection from the extreme Siberian climate. As such, many became critically worn down.

Barely 3,500 of these tanks in storage were relatively modern T-72Bs, T-80B/BVs and T-90s. Just over 100 units of these in storage before the start of the war were T-90s, mainly original T-90 Obr. 1992 tanks, not more modern T-90As. The rest of the stored tanks were old T-54/55s, T-64s (which for the most part are useless to Russia as they lack the knowhow to refurbish them, since they were a Soviet Ukrainian product) and T-62s, which Russia had already started prepping some years before the war to ship to allies such as Assad’s Syria.

Comparison of an area of the 22nd Central Tank Reserve Base in Bui, Russia, between 2021 and 2025. Almost all modern T-72Bs, T-80BVs, T-80U/UDs and T-90s tanks stored here were gone by late 2023. Most that remain there are old, broken BMP-1s, BTR-80s and BRDM-2s. Entire sections of this base have since been abandoned and vegetation has reclaimed the grounds. Source: Google Earth.

These stored tanks and other armored vehicles had been up to that point being used as sources of spare parts to maintain active vehicles and chassis for rebuilt, modernized vehicles to feed the Russian army with armor replacements whenever it needed. Repairs and overhauls were mainly done at Armor Repair Plants (BTRZs in Russian). However, when equipment losses started to mount in Ukraine in the very first weeks of the Special Military Operation, Russian tank units required shipments of tanks and armor in general to replenish their lost equipment and remain operative on the frontline, and to keep pushing their mechanized assaults. New production of T-90Ms, BTR-82s, BMP-3s, 2S19s and other armored vehicles such as MRAPs and IMVs was too low to satisfy military requirements for the war effort, so Russia turned to its huge stockpile of Soviet-era armor to reinforce its forces, which - after all - was the raison d'etre for this stockpile in the first place.

It was at this point that the myth of ‘Russia running out of tanks’ began. To be honest, yes, Russia lost unbelievable amounts of armored vehicles during the first weeks of the invasion, until it pulled its forces from northern Ukraine once it became clear that it wouldn't be able to take Kyiv. Based on data from WarSpotting, of the 3,704 tanks lost by Russia up to the time this article was written, 1,304 were lost between February 24th 2022 and December 31st 2022. Of these, a staggering 669 were lost between February 24th and July 1st. And that’s on top of thousands more pieces of heavy equipment: 21,512 lost up to this day, of which 4,450 were taken off the board just between February and July 2022.

In short, the war’s opening weeks and months were characterized by losses we can politely call “eyewatering”. This was the time of Javelins, primitive ‘cope cages’, coordinated artillery precision strikes (drones still had yet to appear in the battlefield) and mechanized columns that clogged Ukrainian roads and made them easy prey.

Russian tank losses by type since the start of the invasion until the end of 2025. 2022 stands out over the average of Russian tank losses, while so far 2026 has seen even fewer armor losses. Source: WarSpotting.

Obviously, such rate of attrition for Russia’s mechanized forces, had it been sustained longer, would have exhausted Russian armor reserves very quickly. However, after the retreat from the Kyiv area and an initial push to take Donbas which quickly failed and exhausted the Russian forces for months (it was at this time that Wagner took precedence in the battle of Bakhmut, as most Russian core units were combat incapable for the time being), Russian armor losses fell to a level that was manageable, even if still brutally high for most European militaries.

All the while, Russia had already begun pouring as many assets as it had available into Ukraine to reinforce the invasion, far beyond the initial strength dedicated to the attack in February 2022. On September 11th 2022, Russia lost its first T-90M tank against Ukrainian forces; everything available was being committed. But as the Russian prewar tank fleet was halved in the first war of the year, yet armored attacks still remained Russian officers’ preferred tactic until late 2024, it’s clear that Moscow had already started a massive effort to refurbish and overhaul their huge tank reserves to replenish their losses.

Early in the war, satellite imagery from the main Russian armor storage bases showed that, initially, the staff at these facilities focused on bringing back to service the most up-to-date and easy-to-fix pieces: the few T-90s to be modernized to T-90A/M variants in Uralvangozavod (UVZ), T-80B/BVs either repaired and sent to the frontline or modernized in Omsktranshmash to T-80BVMs, and of course T-72Bs, mostly sent as were to the frontline, though some were also modernized to T-72B3/B3Ms in UVZ.

Nonetheless, they faced one problem: repair facilities could only reactivate so many tanks at a time, each took weeks to be ready, and focusing just on the most modern tank types meant facing a bottleneck that would make it impossible to resupply many units to the point that they could maintain their combat capabilities. The 1st Tank Guards Army, decimated first in Chernihiv and later in Kharkiv, was one such example. Therefore, it was necessary to expand the tank overhaul effort to older types. Even more so as some plants are specialized in specific types of equipment: for example, the 61st BTRZ in Chita is focused on repairing and modernizing T-62 tanks.

It was then, in late 2022, that we started seeing shipments of older types of Russian armored vehicles, many of them long out of service, being sent to Russian forces in Ukraine to keep them equipped, even if with obsolete hardware. This is when T-62s, mainly modernized T-62M/MVs, started to be spotted among Russian forces, specially those tasked with holding the bridgehead in Kherson; older tanks were initially expected to just hold the line, not be used in offensive operations. Soon, however, that too would prove unfeasible as equipment losses keep stacking.

Eventually, after the lessons learned from Wagner in Bakhmut and further pyrrhic victories for Russia in their advance over Eastern Ukraine, as well as their first wave of mobilization in late 2022 and early 2023 following their defeat in Kharkiv and Kherson, Russia would find itself in a rough spot: they started the war with ‘lots of metal (equipment), but little meat (manpower)’, but now the situation was the reverse, as they now had more manpower thanks to mobilization and volunteers, yet equipment losses had had such a cumulative effect over time that it was now becoming difficult to replenish armor losses in some sectors of the frontline, creating a need to prioritize which units got equipment. And it wasn’t just combat losses and wear and tear, but also the fact that the 2022 mobilization created several dozen new brigades, which also had to be equipped, and that after the failed 2023 Wagner rebellion, Putin authorized the Rosgvardiya (National Guard) to field heavy armor as well to quell any potential future military attempts.

Or, to put it simply: Russia hadn’t run out of tanks, but some sectors of its frontline were running out of tanks.

If the war had started with Russia having over 28,000 pieces of heavy equipment in storage, by late 2024 there were around 14,000 left, just half of the original stocks. And as one can expect, the best preserved, easiest to reactive, more whole pieces of equipment were first pulled out from storage to repair plants and sent off to the front. As time passes, therefore only the more useless and harder to restore pieces are left, giving diminishing returns on refurbishing efforts.

If the war started with 7,216 stored tanks in total (313 T-54/55s, 1,822 T-62s, 594 T-64s, 1,218 T-72As, 1,478 T-72Bs, 1,486 T-80B/BVs, 193 T-80U/UDs and 112 T-90s), by late 2024 there were only 3,345 left, with no T-90s left and only a few hundred T-80B/BVs and T-72Bs, the rest being T-54/55s, T-62s and T-64s. The fact that Russia had already started deploying ancient T-54/55s in summer 2023 was proof of how far they had to reach to keep their formations equipped, and even then they were frequently understrength.

Russian T-55 fielded by Russian forces in the Russia-occupied part of Zaporizhzhia Oblast in Spring 2023. Source: *Romanov*.

It was then that we started seeing a change in Russian tactics: mechanized attacks had usually yielded little in the way of results, and only after many attempts were Ukrainian units forced to give up ground. But improvised small, light infantry infiltration tactics had usually proved far better at taking ground and surprising enemy formations, not least because the innovations brought forth by FPV drones had made armor concentrations too easy to detect even in the rear. By the latest stages of the battle of Avdiivka, a paradigm shift was clearly noticeable, as the Russian high command switched to infantry-intensive tactics, disregarding the high casualty rates they incurred.

Armor was (and is) still being used, but rarely and almost never in the amounts it used to be, but rather with up to three tanks and IFVs trying small pushes, or with tanks being used as improvised, uparmored APCs to transport infantry as close to Ukrainian positions as possible (the so-called ‘turtle tanks’). In fact, ever since, there has been a clear preference for IFVs such as BMPs and BTR-82s rather than tanks, a complete inversion of the war’s early days. Nowadays, more modern tanks are very rarely used. After all, if armor is almost invariably lost when supporting an attack, why waste a T-90M when a cheaply refurbished T-62 does the job equally well?

Two examples of Russian ‘turtle’ tanks deployed in the frontline in Ukraine. Source: Telegram.

Even at this point, at the lowest point of Russian armor preservation, Russia was probably still fielding some 1,500 tanks, plus several more APCs and IFVs. However, since the latter half of 2024, Russia has been able to reconsolidate their mechanized forces, and in a way, just in time: while their stockpile of armored vehicles has by now reached bottom (2,088 tanks and 9,650 armored vehicles of all types, mainly older types such as T-62s, BTR-60/70s, BRDM-2s… all missing parts or outright cannibalized to keep other vehicles running), their BTRZs have been working overtime to churn out thousands of refurbished pieces per year. Of the remaining tanks, 122 are T-54/55s, 775 T-62s, 440 T-64s, 414 T-72As, 163 T-72Bs, 52 T-80B/BVs and 82 T-80U/UDs.

Despite storage numbers running awfully low, a tank pulled from storage doesn’t mean it’s replacing another tank that has been destroyed. Take T-80s: 1,679 were in outdoor storage in 2021, now there are only roughly 100 left, but Omsktranshmash still has another 250 or so parked in the yards outside the factory, waiting their turn to be modernized. Meanwhile current estimates place the number of T-80s in service in 2026 at 250 T-80BV/U and 350 T-80BVM, while losses remain minimal. While storage will probably reach zero this year, their T-80 fleet will also slightly increase in size at the current rate.

Evolution of Russian tank storages from 2021 to 2026. Source: *Covert Cabal*.

Recently, an investigation by Frontelligence Insight discovered that UVZ was planning on switching their T-72 efforts from T-72Bs, pretty much now exhausted in storage, to older T-72As, until now untouched by the Russian reactivation efforts, and in quantities that fairly match the number of T-72As that were in storage right before they started shipping them to UVZ. The months prior to that Russia had already taken around 50% (from 900 to 461 units left in storage) of their T-72A stockpile from storage bases to UVZ. And recently we have indeed started to see visual confirmation of refurbished and modernized T-72As back to service in Russian formations. All in all, expanding refurbishment efforts to T-72As opens up a further thousand tank hulls that Russia could eventually press back to their ground forces.

Modernized T-72A (official designation: T-72B3M) as shown in early May by Russian state television being delivered by Uralvangozavod to the army. Source: Russia Television and Radio

This is just one among several such efforts recently undertaken by Russian authorities and manufacturers to resuscitate what’s left in storage. But besides several hundred ancient yet still workable types such as T-72As and a few hundred T-62s, the rest of the remaining stored equipment is so rundown that it will probably never be repaired. A good example of this is the recent trend of taking armored vehicles from storage bases to turn them into public monuments in Russian cities, by putting them on pedestals in places such as roundabouts. Or, in other instances, transforming stored tank hulls into specialized vehicles such as armored recovery vehicles because they’re too degraded/too many spare parts are lacking to be modernized as proper tanks (e.g. BREM-80 ARVs based on T-80BV hulls).

However, while Russia pulled back to their proper territory some core formations such as the 1st TGA, it was not just stockpiles that were worked through in BTRZs; UVZ and other major producers such as Kurganmashzavod (BMP-3) or Arzamas (BTR-82) managed to expand their producing capabilities. Estimates put new production at roughly 200-250 T-90Ms, some 400-480 BMP-3Ms, around 100-120 BMD-4Ms and some 500-700 BTR-82s, on top of several hundred more IMVs and MRAPs, and 2,000-3,000 refurbished armored vehicles taken from storage just in 2025. By now the Russian tank fleet likely surpasses in size the prewar fleet by a few hundred tanks, yet the overall quality has gone down considerably, with it today being a mix of high-low tech equipment, from plain, unmodernized T-54/55s to newly-made T-90Ms.

To sum it up, this will be the last great war fought with Soviet-era armor. Russia is managing to reform their core armored formations, but there are some caveats:

*1. Clearly they are thinking in the long run, predicting that eventually a solution to the current drone saturated environment will be reached that allows them to bring back fast, mobile warfare via armored vehicles, and preserving and rebuilding the mechanized corps in the meantime. They could also be forced to go back to mechanized warfare if Russia fails to meet its recruitment target for this year.

*2. Even if new production has surged (it is estimated that Russia barely produced 60–70 T-90Ms in 2022, rising to 140–180 in 2023), it probably has by now reached its maximum capacity and in itself won’t be able to replenish all those huge fields of Soviet tanks accumulated over decades of war economy production.

*3. Russia’s war economy itself is already showing its cracks and won’t be able to maintain its current arms production rate in the long run. However, that doesn’t mean Russia won’t be able to again field huge tank formations in Ukraine if it ever finds a workaround for the current threats to armor.

*4. The loss of the vast Soviet legacy stockpiles means the capability to quickly regenerate after high attritional warfare won’t be there anymore for Russia and they’ll have to change their approach to mechanized warfare, not being able to throw massive armored pushes at the enemy anymore nor waste any piece of equipment (including as a way of diplomacy by giving armor for free to friendly/satellite regimes).

In short, the death of Russian armor has been greatly exaggerated. But the impact of these last four years of fighting has not been negligible, and the impacts will echo through the Russian armed forces for years or decades to come.