Ukraine could have more battle tanks than Russia for the first time ever new data suggests
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- Ukraine could have more tanks than Russia for the first time, new data suggests.
- While Ukraine's tank fleet has continued to grow throughout the war, Russia's has depleted.
- However, a land warfare specialist said this might not be enough of an advantage for Ukraine.
Ukraine could now be able to field more battle tanks than Russia for the first time, new data suggests.
A compilation of data from various sources suggests Ukraine currently has roughly 1,500 active tanks compared with around 1,400 for Russia, Bloomberg reported.
Russia began the war with 3,417 tanks available. At the same time, Ukraine had 987, according to The Military Balance for 2023, an annual report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank which looks at military equipment inventories.
While Ukraine's tank fleet has continued to grow, Russia's has been severely depleted.
Ukraine has received 471 additional tanks since the war began last year, and a further 286 are still due to arrive, per data published by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy,
During the conflict, Ukraine has lost 558 tanks and captured 546, data from open-source outlet Oryx suggests.
Meanwhile, Oryx estimates Russia has lost 2,091 tanks in the war.
This is likely a conservative estimate, as the outlet only counts destroyed vehicles of which photo or video graphics evidence is available.
Celestino Arce/NurPhoto via Getty Images
A top British defense official said this week that Russia has lost "nearly half" of its combat effectiveness since invading Ukraine.
Russia has also been bringing decades-old Soviet tanks out of storage to send to the front lines after suffering heavy equipment losses.
It is difficult to confirm exact figures for equipment as both Russia and Ukraine treat their losses as classified information, and open-source data can only provide rough estimates. It is also unclear how many old, retired tanks Russia has brought out, Bloomberg noted.
On paper, Russia has more than 12,000 tanks, but most are believed to be obsolete and in storage. Many are too dilapidated to be useful for anything except as a source of scrap metal, a May 27 British military intelligence situation estimate said, per The Kyiv Post.
While the parity of tanks on the battlefield could be promising for Ukraine, Yohann Michel, a land warfare specialist at the IISS, warned Bloomberg that parity might not be enough.
"Even if the situation is more equal in numbers, that isn't how it works," Michel said. "The problem is that Ukraine now needs to regain territory, so it's on the offensive against well-prepared defenses, and for that, you need a strong advantage."
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