Russia has likely lost over 4,000 tanks in Ukraine, with open-source data suggesting even higher numbers. Poor logistics, battlefield conditions, and changing tactics have impacted the scale and type of losses.
The exact number of tanks that the Kremlin has lost in the ongoing fighting in Ukraine isn’t known, and the Kremlin isn’t releasing any figures. Kyiv suggested the number 4,000 last June, with the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces claiming that Russia saw as many tanks destroyed, disabled, or abandoned.
The number provided by Ukraine was likely a high estimate, but a US official also touted a similar figure in early April during a hearing of the United States Senate.
“The Russians have lost more than 4,000 tanks, which is almost the inventory of the United States tank corps,” General Christopher Cavoli, the head of the US European Command, told lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee during a hearing about the impact of military and intelligence assistance to Kyiv.
“The scale of this conflict is just awe-inspiring.”
Russia Has Lost Over 4,000 Tanks in the War in Ukraine
According to the independent open-source researchers at the Oryx group, which has tracked military losses since Russia launched its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine more than three and a half years ago in February 2022, Russia has lost at least 4,000 tanks.
The open-source analysis was based on photo and video evidence. It also included destroyed, abandoned, and captured Russian tanks. As the database only includes confirmed losses of military equipment, as documented by photos and videos, and not actual on-the-ground analysts or researchers, the numbers could be far higher.
“If the origin of a tank cannot be reliably established, it is not included in the list,” explained the Ukrainian-based Militarnyi.
In total, Oryx estimated that more than 22,000 individual Russian platforms, including tanks, armored vehicles, and aircraft, have been lost, destroyed, or captured in the fighting. Just a year ago, Oryx confirmed that around 2,000 Russian tanks were considered lost, signaling that the past year has seen higher losses than the previous two years.
However, the number of tanks captured has declined significantly.
Kyiv’s forces had steadily captured Russian armor in the earlier stages of the war, but that hasn’t been the case in recent months. Militarnyi also cited Oryx data that found the “last captured Russian tank was recorded in November last year,” when “Ukrainian marines managed to capture a Russian T-72 B3 tank in the Kurakhiv sector.”
As Newsweek reported a year ago, “Many tanks were needlessly lost because of Moscow’s inability to put recovery vehicles into theater, or plan for repair,” with “many tanks were unnecessarily abandoned, meaning they could not be used in later stages of the war.”
The past year has seen the Kremlin make more of an effort not to allow its abandoned tanks to be captured. Those that couldn’t be recovered may have been destroyed to keep them from being retrieved by Kyiv.
Ukraine Says It Destroyed Over 10,000 Russian Tanks
Figures released by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Thursday reported via a post on social media that Russia had lost as many as 10,864 tanks and 22,645 other vehicles. The figures also claimed that 984,940 Russian soldiers were killed, wounded, missing, or captured.
The breakdown of those killed versus wounded wasn’t clarified, but in February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed nearly 250,000 Russians had lost their lives in the fighting. An early May report from the BBC put the number a bit lower, with 106,745 Russian soldiers identified, and thus likely far higher, possibly somewhere in the middle between what Zelensky claimed and the BBC confirmed as dead.
Even on the low end, it is significantly higher than the estimated 15,000 Soviet soldiers killed in the decade-long Soviet-Afghan War. That has led to speculation that the Kremlin misreported the losses just as it is doing now, but even when the dust settles, it may be impossible to ever put a final bloody tally on the cost of this war.
About the Author: Peter Suciu
Peter Suciu has contributed over 3,200 published pieces to more than four dozen magazines and websites over a thirty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. He is based in Michigan. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: [email protected].
Image Credit: Shutterstock/Milan Sommer.
