The Russian army has been gridlocked in Donbass for the past two years. Its only gains have been from small unit infantry infiltrations and even those have been with absurd casualties. We have seen armored assault attempts from individual “turtle tanks” to company level attacks, but none have been very successful and most have been stopped before even reaching the Ukrainian frontline positions.
Latest iteration of the T-72A aka. T-72B3M obr 2026
While the use, and thus losses, of tanks have been decreasing, the production of new tanks and modernization of existing ones by the Russian factories has continued at full capacity. Some commentators have suggested that the inertia of the Russian military industry is causing them to continue building systems rendered obsolete by the shifting paradigm on the battlefields.
The pause in large scale armored operations has allowed Russia to rebuild some of its tank and motorized rifle divisions into near full capacity with crews that have received proper training under leaders that have first had experience from surviving the great culling of the Russian tank force in 2022 and 2023. Without a proper key to the frontline deadlock, these units have been maintained as a reserve and the armor support for the frontline forces has been provided with smaller detachments often operating obsolete tanks with extensive field modifications.
Operation Vivaldi by the Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps illustrated that the combined arms warfare with mechanized units conducting assaults, supported by artillery, unmanned ground and air units, electronic warfare specialists and aviation is still a viable way to defeat entrenched positions of infantry backed by FPV drone units. But as of October 2026 the Russian army hasn't been even close to achieving this level of coordination.
The Russian tank fleet, in the short term, will consist of four parts:
Legacy tanks such as T-72A/B and obsolete tanks like T-55M(V) and T-62M(V)
T-72B3 and T-90M that are comparable in their latest upgraded forms
T-80BVM/UE-2
T-14 Armata in small batches
As the T-90M has been the standard production vehicle for the new ground up built tanks for the past several years, it’s no surprise that it and the fully overhauled and upgraded T-72B3 tanks will form the main body of the actual tank regiments.
The continued investment on rebuilding and upgrading T-80 series tanks to the latest specification shows that Russia has ambitions to maintain a larger modern tank fleet than it is capable of reaching with the new production of the T-72 derivatives. So the Russian tank building program is clearly working under some time pressure. It wouldn’t be cost effective to maintain these older tanks with Ukrainian roots as a completely separate technical platform.
T-14 Armata and a BMBT fire support vehicle in Tsentr26
I have personally declared the T-14 Armata dead many years ago. But the latest footage from the Tsentr 2026 exercise conducted together with the Chinese PLA showed that the pre-production/troop trial version of the T-14 featured the previously missing tiny capabilities such as working gun stabilizer and ability to fire on the move. No open source information suggests that the troublesome X-Diesel engine A-85-3A has been swapped out from the current production batch of the Armata. The production and maintenance of this finicky, but compact, engine is likely the most limiting factor for the T-14 Armata production.
T-72 "Shturm" remote operated tank with its perfectly adequately sized barrel
Russia has also unveiled a whole host of different armored UGV:s, with the T-72 based “Shturm” complex being the closest to an actual MBT. It is not an autonomous robot tank, but rather just a remote controlled urban assault platform to be used in very specific and dangerous assault missions. As far as its concept goes, it’s not that far from the 1930’s Teletanks the Red Army sent against Finland in 1939. They performed just as badly as the regular Russian tanks, so Finns didn’t even notice anything odd about them.
As a conclusion Russia is using significant resources to build and maintain its capability to wage mobile warfare with armored divisions. While they aren't currently effective against the Ukrainian defense, these 1000+ strong tank forces do pose a threat to other theaters. The Russia's tradition Achilles's heel logistics is actually far more limiting than their brute force. Especially the current crippling shortage of diesel and aviation fuel is going to cause problems for any long range military adventurism.
-----
Petri Mäkelä
04.10.2026
Comments
Post a Comment