Ukraine Has Caught Up With Russia’s Tank Numbers, Data Signal
(Bloomberg) -- New data on military aid to Ukraine highlights a significant change in the balance of heavy weapons on the nation’s battlefields after more than 16 months of war.
An update Thursday of the Ukraine Support Tracker database maintained by Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy said Kyiv’s backers had delivered 471 new tanks since the start of the war, with a further 286 still to arrive, even as the rate of new pledges slowed.
Combined with a tally of equipment lost or captured by the open source intelligence group Oryx, widely considered to be conservative, the figures suggest that Ukraine’s tank fleet has grown since the start of the invasion last year, even as Russia’s has halved.
The gap also narrowed in terms of artillery and multiple-launch rocket systems, although by much smaller margins.
The data on tanks in particular tallied with parliamentary testimony given by UK Chief of the Defense Staff Tony Radakin on Tuesday.
“Russia has lost nearly half the combat effectiveness of its army,” Radakin told the legislature’s defense committee. “Last year it fired 10 million artillery shells but at best can produce 1 million shells a year. It has lost 2,500 tanks and at best can produce 200 tanks a year.”
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According to Oryx, which records only losses it can confirm, 2,082 Russian tanks have been destroyed, damaged, abandoned or captured since the start of the war in 2022. Moscow began with 3,417 tanks available, according to the Military Balance, an annual compendium of world armories published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank.
There are huge uncertainties around such figures, with both sides treating their losses as state secrets and significant difficulties in open-source collection — especially when it comes to Ukrainian losses, which are less well recorded. There are also no reliable figures for the number of replacement tanks or artillery pieces Russia has either produced or pulled from deep storage since the start of the war.
Ukraine did, however, seem to come through the first year of the war with roughly the same number of heavy weapons it had at the start, despite heavy losses, according to Yohann Michel, a land warfare specialist at the IISS. Michel conducted his own analysis of the available data earlier this year, adjusting for likely biases in the data. There have since been both more losses, deliveries and seizures of Russian tanks.
The same, though, can’t be said for Russia, which also has to reserve a portion of its forces for defenses elsewhere across the world’s largest country. The change in the balance of heavy arms is important, but far from decisive for Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive, according to Michel.
Cost ‘Still High’ for Ukraine
“Even if the situation is more equal in numbers, that isn’t how it works,” said Michel. “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.”
That explains the focus of Ukrainian forces on destroying Russian artillery and supply lines before committing the bulk of the brigades prepared for the counteroffensive. Ukraine’s general staff recently has been claiming the destruction of more than 30 Russian artillery pieces on an almost daily basis. Artillery losses are particularly difficult to verify, as they are generally hidden well behind front lines.
The Kiel Institute’s update of its figures for February 25 to May 31 found that aid pledges were significantly lower than over the winter, despite some large packages from Germany and the US, with military pledges totaling €9 billion ($9.77 billion) in the period.
At the same time, the share of military aid rose relative to financial and humanitarian commitments, the institute said. The US and European Union member states have been slowest to deliver on arms pledges, the report said, with 286 of 757 tanks, and 177 of 556 155mm and 152mm howitzers yet to arrive.
Those delays could make even some of the delivered tanks less effective than they should be, as Ukrainian forces have had to rush training, often by different North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners that have different practices.
“As long as the Ukrainians don’t have a clear advantage,” said Michel, “the cost of trying to move forward will be very high.
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