The Russian Federation lost half of its tank fleet – at least 5,500 units. However, the aggressor country is not able to fully compensate for the loss of equipment at the front. National security expert Ivan Varchenko spoke about this on the FREEDOM TV channel.
“The Russian military economy was quite closed; we could only fragmentarily estimate how many planes, tanks or armored vehicles they had. According to rough estimates, Russia had about 12 thousand tanks, of which 3 thousand were in service, and about 9-10 thousand were mothballed. Today, according to confirmed data alone, 5.5 thousand tanks have found their end on the Ukrainian fronts,” he said.
Varchenko noted that some of the Russian tanks—several hundred, according to estimates for the first half of 2023—were commissioned by the Ukrainian army.
“We would greatly simplify the calculations if we did not take into account that Russians are capable of decommissioning, updating and producing. It is estimated that Russia has traditionally produced up to 100 tanks per year. Now, even with maximum efforts, it is possible to produce only 200-300 tanks per year,” he says.
According to him, even the annual production of such a number of tanks does not compensate for the losses that the Russian army suffers every month.
“As for armored personnel carriers, there was talk of about 24 thousand for 2021, but now more than 10 thousand armored personnel carriers and other armored vehicles have been destroyed. This means that Russia cannot compensate in streaming mode for what it spends at the front. And of course, we need to look for opportunities to destroy even more Russian equipment,” concluded Ivan Varchenko.