Under pressure from Kiev’s surprise offensive in northeastern Ukraine, Russia last week reached the 1,000th main battle tank destroyed since it invaded its neighbor on February 24. This equates to almost a third of the active armament fleet in the service of Vladimir Putin’s army.
The precise count of 1,023 units destroyed, damaged, abandoned or captured by the fifth (8th) is quite conservative. Russian military analysts interviewed by the Sheet estimate the numbers could be closer to the 2,100 tanks Kiev claims to have rendered useless or taken over.
But it is a measure based on public data collected by the Dutch open intelligence analysis website Oryx. In it, all Russian and Ukrainian equipment that were photographed or filmed are catalogued, after a team has verified the veracity of the record through elements such as geolocation.
It is a Herculean work, which shows an inventory of 5,549 lost Russian military items, 3,614 of them permanently destroyed. According to the Oryx, 1,500 different weapons were captured for use. Of the tank model most used in the war by Moscow alone, versions of the T-72, there were 555 casualties.
The Russian Defense Ministry does not release casualty data. Even the most precious item in the conflict, human lives, was the subject of a partial report in distant April. Western estimates put the deaths of Russian soldiers at between 15,000 and 20,000. Kiev already admits 11,000 dead to its ranks.
The high rate of tank loss is offset by reserves with older models, often lacking modern optical sights, laser target designators, or reactive armor protection. According to the IISS (International Institute for Strategic Studies, London), a reference on the subject, the active Russian fleet before the war was 3,387 modern or modernized tanks.
But there are no less than 10,200 units on hand in stocks, and T-64s have been stocked up for a few months now — which makes it impossible to say that Moscow has already lost a third of its active tanks. This explains Putin’s continuation of the war of attrition, destructive for both sides.
It’s a confidence that harkens back to the Soviet mentality of winning by numerical superiority, which worked against the Nazis in World War II but had not been put to the test in the 21st century environment on this scale.
Even using the conservative Oryx account, the losses are significant. They focus on the initial phase of the war, when Putin directly attacked Kiev and other major cities with unprotected armored columns, an easy target for Ukrainian mobile infantry, armed with American Javelin anti-tank missiles.
As a result, 700 of the 1,000 tanks lost by Moscow were lost by May, when the nature of the conflict changed and Moscow began to focus its actions in a more coordinated way in eastern Ukraine. Such friction has resurfaced the thesis of a supposed obsolescence of this type of weapon in a battlefield full of drones that guide artillery.
American military analyst Rob Lee wrote a detailed study for the website War On The Rocks showing that such a view is wrong: the Russians’ problem was tactical poverty and logistical errors out of arrogance. So much so that, reorganized, they stopped losing so many tanks.
An example that Putin underestimated Kiev’s resistance is the fact that the vast majority of the lost 194 T-80 model tanks were abandoned by crews. Reason: the vehicle has a turbine engine, ideal for use in low temperatures but which consumes much more fuel than a conventionally equipped model.
Thus, the fast T-80s advanced quickly and were unable to fill the tank, which drinks up to 750 liters of a special mixture every 100 km driven.
In the field of other armored vehicles, focusing on light tanks, infantry support and troop transport, the survey points to a significant loss of 10% of the models available to the Russians. But the numbers end up making up for the Kremlin: there were, before the war, according to the IISS, no less than 17,348 units available.
Missiles and ammunition are not included in the accounts. In recent months, there has been a visible reduction in the use of precision weapons by the Russians, a sign that Moscow is saving its stocks, which will be difficult to replenish until there is no alternative to the Western chips used in cruise missiles.
Oryx data shows a loss of 53 aircraft, nearly 4% of the total fleet. It’s not little, but in detail the data are even more worrying for Putin’s Air Force due to the performance of its most sophisticated planes.
Almost 10% of the fleet of its famous Su-34 attack plane has already been lost. The Su-30 multi-role fighter saw 10 of the 110 units available to the Kremlin being shot down. Its more advanced brother, the Su-35S, fares much better, with 1 out of 97 units dropped.
In the naval field, where Moscow has a wide margin over Kiev, the side-by-side losses are equivalent, 20 ships or boats each. The Ukrainian fleet was effectively neutralized, but Russia was left with the worst image when she saw the heavy cruiser Moskva, the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, sunk in April.
On the Ukrainian side, the numbers are much lower in the Oryx survey for two reasons. First, Kiev’s forces are nominally much smaller than Moscow’s.
Second, there is an obvious under-reporting, because there is a great restriction on the dissemination of images and information about Ukrainian losses and even actions – already showing destroyed Russian tanks and planes, which are available for registration on their territory, constitutes natural propaganda.
According to Oryx, Ukraine saw 1,561 military items lost, 879 destroyed. Regarding pre-war stockpiles gauged by the IISS, before the United States and allies flooded the country with Western weapons, Kiev lost 25% of its tanks and 33% of its aircraft.
As said, these are numbers to be read only as a reference, also because they do not count on external reinforcements: Poland alone sent 230 old T-72 tanks to the neighbor, 12 of which the Oryx has already seen destroyed.
In propaganda warfare, the Russian Defense uses grandiose numbers to describe the rival’s losses: 293 aircraft, 4,870 tanks and armored vehicles, 827 rocket launchers. Again, the reality must be somewhere between this and what Oryx describes.
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
