Ukraine, report reveals Russian losses: “Half of tanks destroyed”

The deployment of the most technologically advanced tanks by the US and Germany to Kiev, the Abrams and the Leopard 2, could really change the course of the war in Ukraine. This is also due to the state of heavy weapons in the army of Vladimir Putin. Russia has lost potentially up to half of its entire operational fleet of tanks since the start of the war in Ukraine. This is what emerges from the information collected by the monitoring group Oryx, according to CNN reports. The agency collects visual evidence of military equipment losses in Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, and this week reported that it had verified the loss of 1,000 Russian tanks throughout the conflict, adding that 544 Russian tanks were captured. by Ukrainian forces, 79 damaged and 65 abandoned.

That number also does not include casualties that Oryx was unable to visually confirm, said Jakub Janovsky, a military analyst who contributes to the group’s blog, estimating the true number could be closer to 2,000. “Russia started the war with about 3,000 operational tanks, so there’s a good chance that Russia has lost half of its usable assets,” Janovsky was quoted as saying by CNN.

Dmitry Medvedev, vice-president of the Security Council of Russia, also spoke on the subject. “Russia plans to build and upgrade thousands of tanks,” while Ukraine “begs for weapons from abroad,” the former president was quoted as saying by TASS. “Yesterday, as we know, our opponent asked, begging, planes, missiles, tanks abroad. What should we do in response: it is clear that in this case it is natural for us to increase the production of various types of weapons and military equipment, including modern tanks” , said Medvedev during a visit to Omsk. “We are talking about the production and modernization of thousands of tanks,” continued Medvedev, noting that this task stems from decisions taken by Putin.