Russian Tank Casualties in Ukraine Hit Dire Milestone

Russia's forces in Ukraine have lost more than 6,000 tanks in nearly 23 months of war, according to Kyiv's military, as the grueling war shows few signs of coming to an end in 2024.

Moscow has lost 6,002 main battle tanks since February 2022, Ukraine's armed forces said on Thursday. This includes 12 losses in the past 24 hours, according to Ukraine's military command.

Newsweek has not independently verified these numbers, which are complicated by neither side releasing its own figures of equipment losses. But experts have broadly suggested that Kyiv's military is likely not too far off an accurate figure.

Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.

The figures are the latest indication of the cost of nearly two years of war, with the attrition chewing up Russia's tank fleet.

According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, Russia had 1,800 operational main battle tanks at the start of 2023. Around 10 months after the beginning of the all-out war, there were "significant losses to Russian military power, including some of its most modern equipment, particularly in its armored fighting vehicles," the think tank said.

It lost around half of its pre-war T-72 fleet and many of its later model T-80s, the IISS said, adding Moscow had to replenish these lost vehicles with older equipment. Russia is reported to have brought ancient tanks out of storage and upgraded others.

Experts said these older tanks like the T-55 would be far less effective against Ukrainian troops than newer, more advanced, and better-maintained military vehicles. In June 2023, reports said Russian forces had used these mothballed tanks as vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices.

Russia even debuted its T-14 Armata, a tank heralded as a breakthrough modern creation, before pulling it from Ukraine just months later.

The mistakes began early, analysts say. In mid-June 2023, experts told Newsweek that Russia's sky-high tank losses were down to failures in organization and planning, poor training, low morale, and ruptures in the chain of command. The most experienced tank crews were committed to the fight in the very few weeks of the full-scale war, leaving behind new recruits with few trainers to instruct them.

In early November, the U.K.'s armed forces minister, James Heappey, told British lawmakers that Russia had lost more than 7,117 armored vehicles, including nearly 2,475 main battle tanks. During a visit to a tank factory in February 2023, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Moscow needed to "increase production of various armaments including modern tanks." As Ukraine's summer counteroffensive got underway months later in June, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to admit that his military had lost 54 tanks in less than two weeks.

Between February 2022 and the beginning of October 2023, Russia lost a confirmed 2,611 tanks, according to the Dutch open-source intelligence outlet, Oryx. Of this number, 1,717 were destroyed, 145 were damaged, and a further 205 were abandoned. Ukraine captured 544, per this count.

However, this only includes visually-verified losses, which means the true figure is likely to be higher. This count also does not take into account the months of fighting since early October, during which Moscow launched its brutal attack on Avdiivka.

Russian armored vehicle losses spiked shortly after Moscow launched its onslaught on the industrial town in Ukraine's Donetsk region which is the current site of the most vicious clashes along the front. Between Russia launching its offensive on the town on October 10 and November 28, Moscow lost more than 211 vehicles around Avdiivka, according to satellite imagery analysis by the Frontelligence Insight project.

The war has also hit Ukraine, although its Soviet-era fleet of main battle tanks has been supplemented by battalions of Western-made tanks, including Berlin's Leopards, the British Challenger 2s, and the U.S. Army's 31 M1 Abrams.

The Kremlin said on Thursday that Ukraine had lost 14,472 tanks and armored vehicles, without differentiating between main battle tanks and other armored vehicles.

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