Google Earth shows nearly half of tanks and armored vehicles have been taken out of storage at major open-air depot in Buryatia
By studying the most recent Google Earth photos from Vagzhanovo, a major open-air military storage depot in Russia’s Buryatia, The Moscow Times has concluded that more than 40 percent of the tanks and other equipment stored at the depot before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine have been taken out of storage.
The publication reports that around 3,840 pieces of armored equipment appeared on Google Earth photos taken five months before the invasion. By May 2023, this number had shrunk to 2,270. This means that 1,570 tanks and armored vehicles have been taken out of storage over the past 1.5 years. Most of them (32 percent of the original number) left the depot after Russia’s President Vladimir Putin declared mobilization in September 2022.
The Russian Defense Ministry’s equipment conservation guidelines describe four categories of storage conditions, ranging from heated and ventilated depots for the most valuable equipment to open-air depots like Vagzhanovo. According to the military expert Pavel Luzin, who spoke to The Moscow Times, the latter are used for storing what “no one would miss.”
Judging by several photos posted by former Vagzhanovo staff on the social media, “no one would miss” the Soviet T-62 tanks, produced in the USSR in 1962–1975. When taken out of storage, some of them are refurbished with new armor, engines, optical and electronic systems, and thermal cameras. Others are disassembled into spare parts.
According to Luzin, refurbished T-62s are sometimes used as artillery. Another expert, who spoke to The Moscow Times anonymously, points out that old Soviet tanks are also used as armored vehicles to support the infantry.
In its first year of full-scale war with Ukraine, Russia lost about half of its modern tanks, as reported by the U.K.-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). The analysts at Oryx estimated that Russia had lost over 2,200 tanks in the same period.
