Russia has long exhausted its reserve of modern battle tanks and switched to obsolete combat vehicles. After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the country had almost 64,000 tanks, although some of them were in storage. This is written by military expert Peter Suchiu in the article "What happened to all Russian tanks" for The National Interest.
By 2020, the number of tanks had decreased to 12,000, which was twice as many as the United States. The Russians had T-72, T-80 and T-90, as well as about 7,300 Cold War-era tanks.
Suchiu claims that since 2022, Russia's tank fleet has decreased significantly. If earlier tank reserves were stored at 24 bases, now there are only 9 such facilities left, he added.
According to OSINT intelligence (collecting information from open sources), 2,887 tanks are in storage in the Russian Federation. Less than 100 of the total number of tanks are T-80s, the rest are obsolete Soviet T-62, T-64 and T-72s. At the same time, more than half of them are in very poor condition and only a quarter are suitable for use.
Russia has not yet been able to solve the problem of tank shortages due to production difficulties. Probably, the Russians"will continue to repair tanks that other countries would send to the dump," the expert summarized.
The Russian Ministry of Defense does not disclose the number of armored vehicles in service. However, the main tank manufacturer, UVZ, regularly sends new and modernized combat vehicles to the troops, including the Т-80BVM.
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