And that lack of infantry could make all the difference.Where Are Russia’s T-14 Armata Tanks? Seemingly Not in Ukraine – The Russian military’s seeming mighty T-14 “Armata” main battle tank (MBT) has long been touted as a potential game-changer for Moscow. But it might not run into a lot of well-trained, well-equipped and well-led Russian infantry. Yes, the Ukrainian 92nd Mechanized Brigade as it drives toward Severodonetsk might run into a lot of modern Russian tanks. The 362nd Motorized Rifle Regiment lost 2,500 killed-half its manpower-in and around Svatove over the span of just 12 days in mid-November. Indeed, the Svatove sector has seen some of the most egregious wastage of Russian manpower. Barely trained, minimally equipped and ambivalently led, these draftees die fast and easy in battle with hardened Ukrainian troops. Instead, the Kremlin has drafted-or lured into service with huge cash bonuses-hundreds of thousands of unhappy and largely unfit men, many of them in middle age. It has even fewer now that it’s lost 100,000 of its best troops killed or wounded in Ukraine. But the Russian army never had enough trained infantry to screen its tanks. Tanks are highly vulnerable to small teams of infantry packing precision-guided anti-tank missiles.Ī tank’s best defense against enemy infantry is. That brings the total T-90 inventory down to around 360, of which at least 50 now are around Svatove.

And after February, it lost at least 36 of the tanks in combat with Ukrainian forces. So in fact, the Russian army had just 400 T-90s before February. Which is why the Russian army increasingly relies on 1970s-vintage T-62s that also were in storage before the war, but which lack high-tech optics and electronics and therefore don’t degrade as fast as 1990s-vintage T-90s might.

But 200 were in storage-and in cold, wet Russia, modern tanks with their delicate optics and electronics tend to degrade fast while not in routine use. Before the current war, the Russians on paper had more than 600 T-90s. It’s an impressive feat for the Russian army to mass two battalions of T-90s. It’s the job of all those T-90s, along with a small number of the latest BMP-T tank-support vehicles, to stop the 92nd Mechanized Brigade. Now it’s got Severodonetsk in its sights. Since the start of the current war in February, the brigade has fought, and won, a series of battles in and around Kharkiv Oblast just north of Svatove. The 92nd Mechanized Brigade is a volunteer unit with well-maintained T-64 tanks and BTR fighting vehicles.

Msot modern russian tank