Russia had to resort to a strategic reserve, taking into account that annual losses are around 2,400 vehicles and annual production is only 900, so the Russian army will already be suffering the impacts of the lack of stock
Russian forces have managed to replace virtually all of the armored fighting vehicles they have lost since February 2022 in Ukraine. But they did so at the expense of a strategic reserve, removing practically all Cold War vehicles that needed to be repaired.
Quoted by Ukrinform, Czech analyst Jakub Janovsky estimates that, in the last almost four years of war in Ukraine, Russian forces have already lost 9,200 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers. At the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian army had 13,842 of these vehicles, the analyst points out.
Even so, Russia managed to replace virtually all of the vehicles, reports Jakub Janovsky, noting that the Russian fleet of those vehicles “is now, in many respects, roughly comparable to or slightly larger than what the Russian armed forces had in operation at the start of the invasion”, in 2022.
To achieve this, however, Russia had to resort to a strategic reserve, taking into account that annual losses are around 2,400 vehicles and annual production is only 900, points out the analyst, who predicts that the Russian army will begin to suffer the impacts of the lack of stock – which, according to Jakub Janovsky, is already happening.
To replace these losses, the Kremlin removed practically all Cold War vehicles that were stored in repairable conditions. According to the analyst, these are BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles and MT-LB armored personnel carriers, with 50 years of use.
This effort, he says, “had the consequence of almost completely depleting the equipment available in stock”.
“My conclusion is that the Russian armed forces are still very dangerous, but, at the same time, they seem incapable of effectively using the armored vehicles they still have”, assumes the analyst.
“I also do not believe that Russia will ever be able to rebuild its stock of spare parts, which means that replacing future losses will have to be done primarily with newly produced vehicles, which represents a very poor prospect for Russia to wage offensive wars on this scale (let alone a larger scale) in the future,” he concludes.
