In a furious speech that will go down in history, Vladimir Putin announced on February 24, 2022 the beginning of a “special military operation” in Donbas, eastern Ukraine. More than two years later and despite the imbalance of forces between kyiv and Moscow or the campaigns orchestrated by the Kremlin, such as the offensive on Kharkov from just a few months ago, one thing is clear: that “special operation” has turned out to be a war of attrition that threatens become encysted.
As the months go by and after almost 900 days Russian invasion, there is another reality that is becoming increasingly evident: the conflict is exhausting one of the great assets that has given oxygen to the Kremlin, the Soviet-era arsenal.
The legacy of the USSR. Although Russia has shown a remarkable capacity to mobilize soldiers and has managed to increase drastically its production of ammunition, missiles and drones despite the sanctions imposed by the West, one of the Kremlin’s great buffers has been its Soviet arsenal.
I was already sliding it in November 2023 The European Security & Defence (ESD) website explained how Russia was using Soviet-era tanks and armoured vehicles stored at the base in Buryatia. Specifically, it spoke of the use of T-54/55 tanks manufactured between the mid-1940s and the late 1970s.
Looking at the gun rackThe country has continued to produce and renew variants such as the T-72, T-80 either T-90but ESD ensures that the Russian defense industry has not been able to “keep up” with manufacturing and has had no choice but to resort to older variants, of the T-54/55 either T-62 The same would apply to armoured personnel carriers, infantry combat vehicles and howitzers dating back to the 1940s and naval guns from the 1950s.
“In a situation where the Russian defense industry was not able to produce more than twenty new tanks of various modifications per month, older material had to be taken from stocks to compensate for the shortfall in demand. And in the end it was the turn of tanks manufactured more than 60 years ago —ESD relates—. The front lines of Russia (and indeed Ukraine) are full of various types of weapons, ranging from obsolete equipment to more or less modern ones.
…And to the horizon of 2025. ESD is not the only one who has noticed the Kremlin’s use of its weapons stock. At the beginning of the year, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) published a report in which he hinted at another equally interesting idea: while the country led by Vladimir Putin has managed to give a notable boost to its defense industry, with the delivery of some 1,500 tanks a year and 3,000 armored combat vehicles and an exponential increase in the manufacture of missiles, RUSI technicians appreciate “significant limitations” related above all to the “longevity and reliability” of its production.
“Of tanks and other armoured combat vehicles, for example, about 80% are not new production, but refurbished and modernised from Russian war stocks. The number of systems in storage means that while Russia may have steady production until 2024, it will start to find that vehicles require more extensive refurbishment only in 2025, and by 2026 it will have exhausted most of the available stock.”
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Not so new reinforcements. The latest to point out to what extent Soviet reserves are giving oxygen to Russia in Ukraine is The Economistwhich has just been published a chronicle with a headline that leaves little room for interpretation: “Russia’s vast reserves of Soviet-era weapons are running out.”
Quoting the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), the British weekly magazine provides a key fact about the 1,530 tanks that Moscow boasted of delivering in 2023: the vast majority of them, almost 85%, would not be new machines fresh from the factory, but old T-72s, T-62s and even some old T-55s that had been taken out of storage to be cleaned and updated.
How much can Russia produce? To understand how much the legacy of the Politburo is easing Russia’s situation, another question must first be clarified: How many tanks is Russia capable of assembling? The IISS esteem that by 2024 it could produce around 90 modern T-90Ms, although with nuances. One of its analysts, Michael Gjerstad, points out that most of these models would actually be upgrades of older versions of the T-90 and that the production of new T-90Ms in 2024 might not exceed 28.
When Ukrainian troops captured a supposedly new T-90m unit last year and began to examine it, they discovered that its gun had been manufactured more than 30 years ago, in 1992. Some Ukrainian estimates They point out that the proportion of truly new tanks, leaving the factory, is much lower than that of vehicles leaving reserves and storage bases.
Question of losses and penaltiesThe picture is completed with two other equally important brushstrokes. The first is related to the loss of material that Russia is suffering. The Economist ensures that during the first 24 months of the war the Kremlin lost 3,000 tanks and 5,000 armoured vehicles of various types. In fact, and to be more precise, Oryx claims to have graphic evidence attesting to the loss of 3,235 tanks.
The question remains as to how much this figure is true. Some people point out that not all casualties are documented, so the real figure may be “significantly higher”, but ESD reminds Also that there is damaged, abandoned or captured equipment that can be repaired and returned to service.
Another key factor is the sanctions imposed by the West on Russia, which may be making it difficult for Russia to produce tanks. While everything indicates that Moscow has managed to circumvent at least part of these vetoes with the help of intermediary allies, there are experts who warn The difficulties in obtaining components are already taking their toll on the Kremlin, which has been forced to use up its stock early and has seen its old supply chain affected.
Images | Dmitriy Fomin (Flickr) and Arndt Torick (Flickr)
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