Russia Taps Soviet-Era Stockpiles as Armored-Vehicle Supply Dwindles
By Matthew Luxmoore
When the director of Russia’s largest film studio met President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin last month, he made sure to highlight how he had supported the war effort—by handing over dozens of tanks and armored vehicles dating back to the 1950s.
The company, Mosfilm, had used armored vehicles from the Soviet era as props for decades. Now, with the Ukraine war chewing through stockpiles, Mosfilm is turning them over. “I was told they were needed, so I reached out to the Defense Ministry,” Karen Shakhnazarov, Mosfilm’s director general, told Putin.
The donation of around 50 vehicles was a drop in the bucket for Russia’s military—but an indication of how deep the deficit of armor has become for one of the world’s most powerful armies. Two-and-a-half years of intense warfare along a 600-mile front has taken its toll, while sanctions have cut off access to Western parts.
Russia has lost more than 11,000 armored combat vehicles in the war, including some 3,600 tanks, according to the estimates of Western officials and analysts—equivalent to almost 15 years of Russian tank production at prewar levels. Analysts say Russia has around 2,600 tanks left in reserve.
New tank deliveries to the front are largely older models plucked from storage, which depletes stockpiles and degrades the overall quality of Russia’s force. The vehicles have “to be sent for refurbishment, then for maintenance and finally, prepared for combat duty,” said a senior Ukrainian intelligence official. “All of this takes time.”
Russia has shown an ability throughout the war to adapt to fierce resistance from Ukraine and pressure from Western sanctions, and it is doing so again now to preserve its supplies of armored vehicles. It has shifted its fighting tactics, stepped up efforts to refurbish old equipment and increased military spending. Most analysts estimate, at the current rate of production, Russia has enough tanks to last another two years.
Moscow’s existing stocks are a legacy of the late Soviet period, when it ramped up defense production in anticipation of a potential war with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. By 1991, the crumbling U.S.S.R. had tens of thousands of tanks in reserve, and as many armored vehicles as the rest of the world put together.
In subsequent years, many of them stood idle in fields, exposed to the elements. Thousands were shipped off for export. A small number were melted down for the production of other hardware. A large portion of what is available today dates from the 1960s and 1970s and requires weeks of work to become operative.
The vehicles handed over by Mosfilm, a titan of Soviet and Russian film production, were given to the studio by the Soviet Defense Ministry in the 1960s. The company is now returning what it had effectively borrowed, including six armored personnel carriers and 36 tanks dating back to the period just after World War II.
“Losses can’t be replenished very quickly,” said Ruslan Pukhov, head of the Moscow-based defense think tank Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies. “Since you constantly need more, you prioritize quantity over quality.”
In the first months of its invasion in 2022, Russia expected a swift thrust toward Kyiv. It deployed large parts of its arsenal to Ukraine, including some of its most modern equipment.
Kyiv’s forces had remarkable success picking off Russian armored vehicles using drones and antitank missiles in spectacular displays of firepower that went viral online. By the end of the year, ordinary Ukrainians could stroll among captured Russian tanks at open-air displays that popped up in several cities.
The parts Russia traditionally sourced from the West, such as precision components and tank optics, had become inaccessible. By the spring of 2023, footage of decades-old Russian tanks being transported on train cars toward Ukraine was prompting Russian television pundits to quip that Moscow could soon start removing from the commemorative plinths the T-34 tanks that had seen service in World War II.
If Kyiv kept getting allied military aid, Western and Ukrainian officials suggested, Russia would run out of the means to keep prosecuting its invasion. “They have nothing left,” Ukraine’s military-intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said in August 2023. “They’ve exhausted their reserves.”
Budanov underestimated the sheer size of Russia’s Soviet-legacy stocks—as well as its ability to adapt.
To skirt sanctions, Russia soon began sourcing components such as Western microchips and telecommunications equipment via third countries. It deepened ties with North Korea, which has sent millions of artillery shells and other military hardware, and more than 10,000 troops to shore up Russia’s defenses. And it pumped money into its arms industry.
Russia’s military industrial complex scaled up, reorienting the country’s economy around the exigencies of war. Military spending has hit a post-Soviet high, and is planned to rise to more than $120 billion next year, making up over 30% of total spending. Almost half a million new jobs have been created by the defense industry.
Uralvagonzavod, Russia’s largest tank factory, has launched a recruitment drive to find crane operators, welders and electricians. Some workers are doing 12-hour shifts. State TV has shown footage of Orthodox priests in cassocks throwing holy water on T-90M tanks—Russia’s newest model—being ferried west.
Michael Gjerstad, who tracks the Russian military at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, estimates that Russia is now producing new and refurbished tanks at the same rate it is losing them on the battlefield—more than 100 a month.
“Yes, there’s a shortage, but it’s not as clear as most people think,” he said. “Russia’s reconstitution has actually been way better than I would have imagined.”
Russia has also changed battlefield tactics to stem vehicle losses. When it launched a large-scale assault on the city of Avdiivka in October 2023, dozens of its tanks and armored troop carriers quickly fell prey to mines, artillery and drones.
The Russians adapted, Ukrainian and Western intelligence officials say: sending waves of infantry forward in small groups, and often keeping tanks concealed in tree lines to fire on the enemy from a distance. They began paying a far greater price in lives than armor.
As Russia now assaults the town of Pokrovsk, west of Avdiivka, Ukrainian drone operator Oleksandr Solonko says Russian vehicles are camouflaged and hidden away. “They drive out to the position, fire on us, and retreat,” Solonko said.
The new strategy of giving priority to infantry assaults has significantly raised the human cost, with Western officials estimating Russian casualties in Ukraine at almost 1,000 a day on average this fall, compared with fewer than 300 throughout most of 2022. It has also made it far harder for Russia to attempt encirclements or major operational breakthroughs in much of Ukraine’s east.
But it has helped Russia preserve its dwindling stock of armored vehicles, while grinding forward inch-by-inch in Ukraine’s east.
“Russia can’t keep up this intensity of offensive operations for ever, but it is adapting in order to extend that timeline,” said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who regularly visits Ukrainian front-line units. “The Ukrainians don’t have time to wait for the Russians to run out of equipment.”
When the director of Russia’s largest film studio met President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin last month, he made sure to highlight how he had supported the war effort—by handing over dozens of tanks and armored vehicles dating back to the 1950s.
The company, Mosfilm, had used armored vehicles from the Soviet era as props for decades. Now, with the Ukraine war chewing through stockpiles, Mosfilm is turning them over. “I was told they were needed, so I reached out to the Defense Ministry,” Karen Shakhnazarov, Mosfilm’s director general, told Putin.
The donation of around 50 vehicles was a drop in the bucket for Russia’s military—but an indication of how deep the deficit of armor has become for one of the world’s most powerful armies. Two-and-a-half years of intense warfare along a 600-mile front has taken its toll, while sanctions have cut off access to Western parts.
Russia has lost more than 11,000 armored combat vehicles in the war, including some 3,600 tanks, according to the estimates of Western officials and analysts—equivalent to almost 15 years of Russian tank production at prewar levels. Analysts say Russia has around 2,600 tanks left in reserve.
New tank deliveries to the front are largely older models plucked from storage, which depletes stockpiles and degrades the overall quality of Russia’s force. The vehicles have “to be sent for refurbishment, then for maintenance and finally, prepared for combat duty,” said a senior Ukrainian intelligence official. “All of this takes time.”
Russia has shown an ability throughout the war to adapt to fierce resistance from Ukraine and pressure from Western sanctions, and it is doing so again now to preserve its supplies of armored vehicles. It has shifted its fighting tactics, stepped up efforts to refurbish old equipment and increased military spending. Most analysts estimate, at the current rate of production, Russia has enough tanks to last another two years.
Moscow’s existing stocks are a legacy of the late Soviet period, when it ramped up defense production in anticipation of a potential war with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. By 1991, the crumbling U.S.S.R. had tens of thousands of tanks in reserve, and as many armored vehicles as the rest of the world put together.
In subsequent years, many of them stood idle in fields, exposed to the elements. Thousands were shipped off for export. A small number were melted down for the production of other hardware. A large portion of what is available today dates from the 1960s and 1970s and requires weeks of work to become operative.
The vehicles handed over by Mosfilm, a titan of Soviet and Russian film production, were given to the studio by the Soviet Defense Ministry in the 1960s. The company is now returning what it had effectively borrowed, including six armored personnel carriers and 36 tanks dating back to the period just after World War II.
“Losses can’t be replenished very quickly,” said Ruslan Pukhov, head of the Moscow-based defense think tank Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies. “Since you constantly need more, you prioritize quantity over quality.”
In the first months of its invasion in 2022, Russia expected a swift thrust toward Kyiv. It deployed large parts of its arsenal to Ukraine, including some of its most modern equipment.
Kyiv’s forces had remarkable success picking off Russian armored vehicles using drones and antitank missiles in spectacular displays of firepower that went viral online. By the end of the year, ordinary Ukrainians could stroll among captured Russian tanks at open-air displays that popped up in several cities.
The parts Russia traditionally sourced from the West, such as precision components and tank optics, had become inaccessible. By the spring of 2023, footage of decades-old Russian tanks being transported on train cars toward Ukraine was prompting Russian television pundits to quip that Moscow could soon start removing from the commemorative plinths the T-34 tanks that had seen service in World War II.
If Kyiv kept getting allied military aid, Western and Ukrainian officials suggested, Russia would run out of the means to keep prosecuting its invasion. “They have nothing left,” Ukraine’s military-intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said in August 2023. “They’ve exhausted their reserves.”
Budanov underestimated the sheer size of Russia’s Soviet-legacy stocks—as well as its ability to adapt.
To skirt sanctions, Russia soon began sourcing components such as Western microchips and telecommunications equipment via third countries. It deepened ties with North Korea, which has sent millions of artillery shells and other military hardware, and more than 10,000 troops to shore up Russia’s defenses. And it pumped money into its arms industry.
Russia’s military industrial complex scaled up, reorienting the country’s economy around the exigencies of war. Military spending has hit a post-Soviet high, and is planned to rise to more than $120 billion next year, making up over 30% of total spending. Almost half a million new jobs have been created by the defense industry.
Uralvagonzavod, Russia’s largest tank factory, has launched a recruitment drive to find crane operators, welders and electricians. Some workers are doing 12-hour shifts. State TV has shown footage of Orthodox priests in cassocks throwing holy water on T-90M tanks—Russia’s newest model—being ferried west.
Michael Gjerstad, who tracks the Russian military at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, estimates that Russia is now producing new and refurbished tanks at the same rate it is losing them on the battlefield—more than 100 a month.
“Yes, there’s a shortage, but it’s not as clear as most people think,” he said. “Russia’s reconstitution has actually been way better than I would have imagined.”
Russia has also changed battlefield tactics to stem vehicle losses. When it launched a large-scale assault on the city of Avdiivka in October 2023, dozens of its tanks and armored troop carriers quickly fell prey to mines, artillery and drones.
The Russians adapted, Ukrainian and Western intelligence officials say: sending waves of infantry forward in small groups, and often keeping tanks concealed in tree lines to fire on the enemy from a distance. They began paying a far greater price in lives than armor.
As Russia now assaults the town of Pokrovsk, west of Avdiivka, Ukrainian drone operator Oleksandr Solonko says Russian vehicles are camouflaged and hidden away. “They drive out to the position, fire on us, and retreat,” Solonko said.
The new strategy of giving priority to infantry assaults has significantly raised the human cost, with Western officials estimating Russian casualties in Ukraine at almost 1,000 a day on average this fall, compared with fewer than 300 throughout most of 2022. It has also made it far harder for Russia to attempt encirclements or major operational breakthroughs in much of Ukraine’s east.
But it has helped Russia preserve its dwindling stock of armored vehicles, while grinding forward inch-by-inch in Ukraine’s east.
“Russia can’t keep up this intensity of offensive operations for ever, but it is adapting in order to extend that timeline,” said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who regularly visits Ukrainian front-line units. “The Ukrainians don’t have time to wait for the Russians to run out of equipment.”