"Zhiguli" instead of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles: how and why is Russian armored vehicles degrading?
April 25, 10:30
Golf carts, Zhiguli cars, motorcycles, and even electric scooters are increasingly being spotted in Russian assault units, and logistical donkeys are increasingly being seen in the rear. Such cases have long been common and raise doubts about the technical support of the Russian army.
According to the General Staff, for every 15–20 destroyed Russian armored vehicles, there are about 150 vehicles. The dynamics of losses of automotive equipment has been growing rapidly in recent months.
A significant example was the massive attack by Russians on motorcycles on April 17–18. Then, the 14th Brigade of the National Guard destroyed 96 of their motorcycles in just one day, and the next day the General Staff reported 312 destroyed vehicles.
It can be assumed that the massive use of civilian transport "at zero" is associated with the shortage of tanks, armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles. So the logical question arises: where does the heavy Russian armored vehicles disappear to and why are they being replaced with whatever is at hand?
Tanks lose to drones
Problems with heavy armored vehicles in the Russian army became especially noticeable during their offensive, which began in the winter of 2024. Over the course of a year of advancing in several directions, the aggressor country lost an extraordinary number of combat vehicles.
According to OSINT analyst Naalsio , as of March, Russia had lost at least 2,352 pieces of equipment in the Pokrovskaya area alone, two-thirds of which were infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) and tanks.
Analyst Richard Vereker calculated that over the course of three months — from September to November 2024 — Russia lost about 250 tanks and 900 infantry fighting vehicles/armored personnel carriers . The last time the Russians lost so many was in 2022: at the beginning of the great war and during Ukrainian counteroffensives in the Kherson and Kharkiv regions.
American military analyst Michael Kofman noted that the Russian army has switched to a strategy of gradual but persistent advance with the aim of exhausting Ukrainian defenses. In response, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have established remote mining of positions using drones, which makes it difficult for the enemy to advance even on the approach to the front line.
Another reason for the success of the Ukrainian forces was the expansion of units specializing in unmanned systems. Reconnaissance UAVs provide almost continuous surveillance to a depth of more than 20 km, allowing them to detect the movements of combat vehicles even at the stage of their preparation and giving the opportunity to deliver pinpoint strikes.
The front is increasingly relying on strike drones. A couple of years ago, artillery inflicted the main losses on the enemy, and already in early 2025, according to Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrsky, half of the hits were carried out by FPV drone operators.
Changing rules of the game on the battlefield, large losses of armored vehicles, and the burden on logistics are forcing Russians to increasingly use non-standard transport - from civilian cars to pack animals.
Despite this, Moscow did not curtail its offensive actions - the political will to exert pressure on the front seems to have outweighed the assessment of potential losses.
To maintain the pace of advance, Russian units began to make more active use of civilian transport - from buggies and motorcycles to trucks. Anything that can move has become a tool for logistics and mobility. This approach allows you to preserve scarce armored vehicles, but the price comes in the lives of soldiers who go into the assault without proper protection.
But why is the powerful Russian defense industry unable to restore the losses of heavy equipment?
Living on Soviet reserves
In fact, Russia's ability to produce new heavy armored vehicles is, to put it mildly, overestimated. The main manufacturers of armored vehicles in Russia are Uralvagonzavod (UVZ), Kurganmashzavod and AMZ. These plants carry out serial production of new equipment: the first specializes in T-90M tanks, the second - in BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles, the third - in the production of BTR-80. The remaining enterprises are engaged in the repair, modernization and restoration of armored vehicles.
According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), from 2022 to 2024, the Russians were able to produce only 164 new T-90M tanks. At the same time, according to the Oryx analytical resource, which records losses of equipment based on visual confirmation, losses of T-90s of various modifications have already exceeded 180 units. The situation is similar with the BMP-3: according to estimates by the Royal Institute for Strategic Studies (RUSI), the annual production of this model is about 350 units, while confirmed losses are already over 600.
Thus, the rate of loss of flagship armored vehicles either exceeds or is actually equal to the production volumes at Russian factories. And this is not even taking into account older models of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, which are destroyed in much greater numbers.
At the same time, the Chairman of the Russian Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, reported on an eightfold increase in the supply of tanks to the Russian army over the past three years.
In fact, there is no contradiction here. It's just that most of the "new" equipment is restored tanks that were produced during the Cold War and are now being removed from storage. According to RUSI estimates, about 85% of all "new" equipment is not freshly assembled samples, but restored vehicles, after repair and modernization.
According to RUSI estimates, in 2024 Russia was able to restore about 1,500 tanks and 3,000 units of other armored vehicles in this way.
If we compare these supplies with confirmed losses based on the Warspotting website, then we will see that in 2024 the Russians lost about 3,000 units of BMP/APCs, as well as more than 1,100 tanks. Thus, the supply of armored vehicles barely, but still covers the losses on the battlefield (at least the recorded ones).
Why restoration, and not the production of new ones? Tank historian and founder of the specialized portal Andrey Tarasenko explained in a comment for Oboronka that over the past decades the Russian Uralvagonzavod has changed its production profile. From a manufacturing enterprise, it was actually transformed into an analogue of a repair plant, the main activity of which is the modernization of outdated T-72Bs to the level of T-72B3M.
According to Tarasenko, the plant can technically produce new tanks in limited quantities, but modernization is a completely different process. The machine is completely disassembled by hand, repaired and reassembled with updated components. For Uralvagonzavod, this is an inorganic task, so it significantly increases labor costs and makes modernization almost as expensive as producing a new tank.
This is what distinguishes the Russian tank industry from the Soviet one. In the USSR, there was an extensive network of specialized tank repair plants, thanks to which the costs of major repairs were significantly reduced through centralized supply of spare parts from warehouses or through large orders of components. At the same time, the main tank enterprises, in particular the same UVZ, in the Soviet period were focused exclusively on the production of new machines.
Tarasenko emphasizes that Uralvagonzavod deliberately became one of the main repair centers in the industry, betting on profit. Instead of expensive production of new vehicles, which requires significant costs and involvement of wide cooperation, the plant chose labor-intensive modernization of existing equipment. The reason for such restructuring is the crisis of the 90s-00s, when orders for tank repairs were the only way to survive and make a profit.
Probably, the situation is similar in the production of new armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles - it is economically much more profitable to raise old vehicles, so the large-scale serial production of new ones suffers.
Will there be enough supplies for a long time?
If the Russians cannot produce enough new armored vehicles and live on reserves, sooner or later they will begin to run out.
For decades, Russian armored vehicle depots were shrouded in myths, such as holding tens of thousands of tanks ready for immediate deployment. However, with the development of satellite technology, these myths have begun to be debunked.
Thanks to satellite imagery like Google Maps, enthusiastic users have begun to independently search for and study Russian equipment storage bases. This has led to the formation of a community of OSINT analysts who systematically analyze and count the equipment at these facilities. They order commercial satellite imagery worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars and conduct detailed identification of the equipment: tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers, and other combat vehicles that Russia is trying to restore and send to war against Ukraine.
OSINT researchers Covert Cabal, Jompy, and HighMarsed estimated that as of the end of 2024, approximately 3,345 tanks of various modifications, 4,065 infantry fighting vehicles, and 4,704 armored personnel carriers remained at such bases.
For comparison, in 2021 there were 6,107 tanks, 7,445 infantry fighting vehicles, and 10,407 armored personnel carriers in storage. Although such estimates have a certain error related to the quality of satellite images or due to closed hangars, they demonstrate Russia's dependence on the Soviet legacy, which actually saved its army in the early years of the Great War.
At first glance, it seems that having thousands more units of Soviet equipment in stockpiles allows Russia to continue to replenish losses and maintain the same pace of offensive operations for years. However, this is not entirely true.
Restoring equipment is not always a simple task. Ideally, this requires taking the freshest combat vehicle from the warehouse, which is best suited for restoration and will require the least amount of manpower for repair or modernization. Such vehicles undergo minimal repairs and additional equipment, after which they are sent to the front.
But in reality, everything is more complicated. All this equipment was stored in the open air for decades. Its condition gradually deteriorated depending on the storage conditions: weather conditions, technical condition at the time of conservation, the level of protection from external influences and vandalism. Because of all these factors, equipment began to be divided by the complexity of restoration: from minimal intervention to complete unfitness for repair.
It was according to this principle that the storage bases were raked out - starting with equipment that requires the least effort to restore, and ending with more "run-down" machines.
How do we know about this? All from the same satellite images. In 2023, relatively intact equipment most often disappeared from storage bases. Next came equipment in worse technical condition (rusty hulls, parts, missing turrets).
The T-80 tanks and MT-LB military tractors were the first to fall into the "light" category. The former due to their relatively short storage period and normal technical condition, the latter due to their simple design.
But losses were mounting, so the Russians moved on to restoring more damaged and outdated vehicles: Brezhnev-era T-55 and T-62 tanks, BRDM-2 reconnaissance vehicles, and BTR-50 armored personnel carriers, developed during Stalin’s time. The T-55s began to be used for training tank crews, while the T-62s and BTR-50s were sent to assault operations.
The number of "light" vehicles that can be quickly repaired is constantly decreasing. As of 2025, about 90% of the T-80 tank stock has already been exhausted, the rest is assessed by Covert Cabal and Jompy analysts as unsuitable for restoration. MT-LB military tractors, of which about 3,700 units were stored before the start of the full-scale invasion, have now completely disappeared from storage bases.
In general, storage facilities have already been emptied by more than 50% - instead of 25 thousand units in 2022, about 11 thousand remain.
Of the remaining part, according to OSINT analysts, only about a third of the equipment is suitable for restoration in a short time (from 2 to 4 months), and the rest either requires more time for repair or is not suitable for it at all.
And we are not talking about the relatively new T-80s, but mostly about the outdated T-72A, BTR-60/70/80, and BMP-1.
Modernization at the factories partially helps to compensate for the enemy's qualitative difference between "old" and "new" equipment. The Russians install modern sighting systems, updated surveillance equipment, new fire control systems and digital communication systems on it. Also, during the modernization process, key components are restored, which extends the life of the equipment and reduces the likelihood of technical malfunctions on the battlefield.
However, it should be understood that even modernized old Soviet equipment has limitations. It will be inferior to modern models in terms of protection, maneuverability, accuracy of fire, and comfort. Old, unmodernized equipment, which is also found on the battlefield, is even less effective — it "sees" worse, breaks down more often, and is dangerous for the crew.
The less new and modernized armored vehicles the Russian army has, the more its dependence on the infantry factor increases. And this leads to an increase in their losses and a slowdown in the pace of the offensive.
Modernizing Soviet equipment is more of an attempt to postpone the problem than a full solution. The idea of restoring Soviet stocks has its ceiling, which is increasingly felt on the battlefield.
So can we expect the Russians to run out of armored vehicles soon?
Actually, no. In one form or another, armored vehicles will always remain at the disposal of the Russian army. However, the key is not the mere fact of the presence of the equipment, but its quantity, quality, and ability to continue the offensive.
The depletion of equipment from storage bases will not lead to immediate changes on the front — the effect will be delayed. The first signs of a shortage are already being recorded: the use of civilian equipment (for example, trucks and pickup trucks) to transport infantry to the contact line. This allows saving the remaining armored vehicles, but at the same time increases the risks for personnel.
Tanks and other armored vehicles will never disappear from the Russian army, but a situation may arise in which there will be insufficient tanks on certain sections of the front to conduct full-fledged assault operations. In such a case, the Russian command will have only two options: intensify assaults at the cost of even greater human losses or switch to a protracted positional war with limited use of equipment.
The key problem for the Russian army in the armored vehicle segment is the increasing time gap between the loss of a combat vehicle at the front and its restoration or replacement. The rate of combat losses may increase or remain consistently high, but the speed of repair will be increasingly limited by the quality of equipment arriving from storage bases, as well as the logistics and capabilities of Russian factories, which also have their own ceiling.
So, armored vehicles are not "running out," but they are increasingly lacking in the right place at the right time to support offensive operations. And there is reason to believe that such cases will increase.
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