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Russia appears to have pulled 1950s-era tanks out of storage in the latest sign of serious armoury shortages in its army.
Pictures and video have emerged of what experts say are T-54 and T-55 tanks being transported by rail from a military depot for mothballed equipment in Russia’s far east.
If sent into Ukraine, the vehicles would likely become the oldest main battle tanks used in the conflict.
The images were released by Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), an independent Russian intelligence group. It did not reveal how it had obtained the pictures or where they were taken.
Other social media sites later released footage of what appeared to be the same train.
Russian-made T55 tanks are believed to have been pulled back into action. Photo / Getty Images
CIT said transport databases showed the train had departed from Arsenyev, the town in the far eastern Primorsky region that is home to the 1295th Central Tank Repair and Storage Base of mothballed military equipment.
It is not clear what the tanks’ destination is, or whether they will see combat. But the fact they have been taken out of storage was taken by experts as further confirmation of a high level of attrition of more modern vehicles.
”What this tells us is that all the remaining modern tanks are in or around Ukraine. So there are no more modern tanks left in stockpiles. It suggests they’ve used up all the T-62s they have in service so they are down to T-55s,” said Ben Barry, an armoured warfare expert at the think tank, referring to another obsolete tank Russia has used to plug gaps in its arsenal.
”It suggests the Ukrainians are continuing to knock out their modern tanks and the proportion of modern tanks being used against Ukraine begins to decline - at a time when the West is supplying modern tanks.”
Exactly how many tanks Moscow has lost in the war is disputed. The Ukrainian army’s rolling tally of claimed Russian tank losses stood at 3557 yesterday. Oryx, an open-source intelligence agency, says it has counted about 1700 confirmed Russian tank losses.
Experts at the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), a British military think tank, said last month that it had confirmed the same number as Oryx but that the true figure could be between 2000 and 2300.
A boy stands in front of a destroyed Russian tank T-72B. Photo / AP
That means Russia has lost about half of the modern T-72s and two-thirds of its T-80s that made up its active modern tank fleet when the war began. IISS estimated Russia had 2927 modern tanks in total and 10,200 tanks in storage, most of which were T-72s and T-80s, when the war began.
Russia appeared to have started dusting off mothballed tanks to replace tank losses shortly after its failed attempt to take Kyiv towards the start of the war.
As early as May last year, obsolete T-62 tanks were seen on the front lines, particularly on the southern front around Kherson.
