Russia has withdrawn almost half of the Soviet tanks and armored vehicles stored in its largest military depot, with more than a thousand units sent to the front or for repairs to make them combat-ready, satellite images seen by The Moscow Times journalists.

The Vagzhanovo military warehouse, located near the city of Ulan-Ude, the capital of the Republic of Buryatia, occupies a territory with a total area of ​​almost 10 kilometers.

Satellite images taken almost 5 months before the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022 show that about 3,840 Soviet tanks and armored vehicles were stored here. But new images taken in November 2022 show that Vagyanovo had only about 2,600 combat vehicles left, which is 40% less than before the war began.

Russian journalists were able to obtain such accurate figures because, unlike other Russian military bases, in the Republic of Buryatia there is mostly one under the open sky.

At the same time, about half of the tanks stored here did not have turrets, which indicates that most of the combat vehicles were sent to the front.

The fact that by November 2022 the Russian military has fielded so many obsolete combat vehicles is a new development that shows that Moscow’s problems with this type of weaponry may have been much more acute than previously thought.

Despite the fact that the first videos of “antique” T-62 tanks sent by the Russians to Ukraine appeared on social networks at the end of May last year, at that time it was believed that only a few dozen units were attributed to the separatists. pro-Russian from Donetsk and Luhansk.

The acute problems of the Russian army with its tank forces began to become more apparent only in March of this year, more than 6 months after the satellite photos analyzed by The Moscow Times were taken, after several videos appeared on social networks, on which can be seen as Moscow moves to the front T-54/55 combat vehicles have been produced since the 1940s.

Some military analysts believe that, at the very least, the tanks are not being used for offensive operations, but as static artillery pieces to reinforce complex defensive lines built by the Russian military to consolidate its gains in the south. and eastern Ukraine.

How many tanks and armored vehicles would the Russian army lose in Ukraine?

The independent site Oryx, which tracks the losses of both armies fighting in Ukraine, estimates that Russia has lost 2,203 tanks to date, of which 547 were captured by the Ukrainians.

As for the losses of Russian military armored vehicles, Oryx estimates them at 939 BMPs and 341 vehicles.

But these estimates are based on images and videos that appear on social media and other open sources, and the real number is likely to be much higher.

The Ukrainian armed forces, on the other hand, estimated that the Russians would have lost 4,254 tanks and 8,278 armored vehicles, but these figures are most likely significantly “overstated” as the information war is being waged on both sides of the conflict.

According to an independent analysis conducted in mid-February this year by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Russians would lose about half of their modern tanks.

“They are not producing or reactivating enough (tanks, no) to make up for these losses. Their current front-line armored fleet is roughly half of what it was at the start of the war,” IISS researcher Henry Boyd told Reuters at the time.

At the time, he estimated that Russia had lost a total of 2,000 to 2,300 tanks, and Ukraine had lost up to 700.

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