Russia pulls thousands of Soviet-era military vehicles from major storage facility

Russia’s largest known military equipment storage facility has been emptied of nearly of half the Soviet-era tanks and armored vehicles that were stored there prior to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, the Moscow Times reported.

Satellite imagery dated five months before Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine shows that around 3,840 Soviet-era tanks and armored vehicles were stored outside the Vagzhanovo military equipment depot, the report stated.

However, less than a year later, around 2,600 of the military vehicles remained at the site — a decrease of just over 40 percent of the total amount observed before the war.

Vagzhanovo has 10 hangars, which, according to the outlet, can accommodate up to 400 armored vehicles.

“At the same time, around half of the tanks at the facility were missing turrets, suggesting that those which have been removed over the past year may have been sent to be refurbished with new parts and equipment, as Moscow has increasingly resorted to sending aging tanks to the battlefield to compensate for its staggering equipment losses,” the Moscow Times said.

According to Oryx, a military blog which records both sides' losses based on verifiable visual evidence, Russia has lost over 11,000 pieces of military equipment and weapons between destroyed and captured gear since it launched the invasion on Ukraine

Oryx reported that Russia lost 2,136 tanks. This is out of the 3,000 combat-ready vehicles of its original reserve when it invaded Ukraine last year according to the Moscow Times.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu called in July for more tanks to be manufactured “to meet the needs of Russian forces” in Ukraine, after Kyiv launched its counter-offensive to reclaim territory occupied by Russia and has been engaged in intense battles against the Russians across a number of battlefronts.

Shoigu stressed the need “to maintain the increased production of tanks” and better security features in armored vehicles, the Moscow Times reported.

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