Russia has lost hundreds of vehicles of various types in the past week, according to figures from Ukraine's military, as fighting rages on in eastern Ukraine.
On Thursday, the military said Russia had lost five tanks, 12 armored personnel vehicles, and an additional 50 vehicles and fuel tanks in the past day.
In the past seven days, Russia has lost 119 tanks, 293 armored personnel vehicles and 437 cars and fuel tanks, according to Ukraine's General Staff of the Armed Forces. Newsweek could not independently verify Ukraine's figures and has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.
Russian vehicle losses throughout the more than 25 months of war have been extensive, but Moscow has mobilized its defense industry to keep rolling out vehicles to replenish its fleet in Ukraine.
Main battle tanks and armored vehicles are critical for mechanized warfare, and fuel tanks are essential for keeping them up and running in battle.
In February, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a U.K.-based think tank, estimated that Moscow had lost more than 3,000 tanks in the two years of war—more than its entire prewar active fleet. Ukraine's estimates of Russia's tank losses are even higher, topping 7,000.
To backfill its stocks, Moscow has increased its tank production fivefold since February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier this year. The Kremlin has also pulled old tanks out of storage and repurposed antiquated vehicles to ferry and detonate explosives around a target.
In the initial stages of the full-scale war, Russia lost a slew of its tanks and armored vehicles, largely because of what analysts described as organizational and planning failures, broken chains of command and poor training. Heavy casualties in the first weeks left gaping expertise holes in Russia's tank crews, experts previously told Newsweek.
Drawn-out battles have also brought spikes in Russian tank and armored vehicle losses. The battle for the Donetsk town of Vuhledar was described by Ukrainian officials in March 2023 as the "biggest tank battle of the war so far," according to a New York Times report.
Russian vehicle losses quickly became a defining part of the Kremlin's attack on Avdiivka, the strategic Donetsk city that Moscow captured in February this year. Ukraine posted images purportedly showing damaged and destroyed vehicles strewn across fields around Avdiivka.
Within weeks of the initial onslaught on Avdiivka in October 2023, Russia switched to more infantry-led attacks to "conserve armored vehicles following the first two waves of assaults on the settlement," the Institute for the Study of War, a U.S. think tank, said this past December.
In late March, Russia launched a large tank and armored vehicle assault on the village of Tonenke, directly west of Avdiivka.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Ellie Cook is a Newsweek security and defense reporter based in London, U.K. Her work focuses largely on the Russia-Ukraine ... Read more
