As modern tanks start arriving in Ukraine, Russia is pulling more Soviet-era tanks out of storage

Open-source intelligence researchers at the Conflict Intelligence Team report that the Russian military has started removing from storage Soviet-era T-54 and T-55 tanks. CIT has tracked a convoy of the ancient war machines moving westward from the Primorsky Territory in Russia’s Far East. CIT previously monitored satellite imagery showing the transfer of Soviet-era T-62 tanks from the same storage reserve.

CIT researchers point out that the T-54 and T-55 tanks, which were manufactured until 1959 and 1979 respectively, suffer from modern-day shortcomings (like a lack of long-range surveillance scopes, ballistic computers, fire-control systems, and more) that raise questions about their utility on the battlefield in Ukraine.

In February 2023, researchers at the International Institute for Strategic Studies estimated that Russia had lost roughly half of its modern tank arsenal since the start of the February 2022 invasion. Meanwhile, monitors at Oryx counted 1,020 Russian tanks destroyed in the invasion’s first year and roughly 550 tanks captured by Ukrainian forces.

In early 2023, Ukraine’s Western allies promised to supply Kyiv with dozens of modern tanks. On March 21, Washington announced that it is expediting its delivery of M1A1 Abrams tanks, though training Ukrainian forces to use the weapons will take some time. In Europe, Poland has already started delivering German-made Leopard tanks.