Satellite images reveal Russia is running out of tanks

Russia has cleared out over a third of the Soviet-era vehicles held at its largest known military storage facility since the start of the Ukraine invasion.

Satellite images show that an open-air depot in remote Buryatia, in eastern Siberia, has lost about 40 per cent of the tanks and armoured vehicles it had previously been housing.

Publicly available images dating from about five months before Russian troops crossed into Ukraine in February 2022 showed about 3,840 Soviet-era vehicles at the Vagzhanovo facility. By November, only 2,600 vehicles appeared to remain at the massive site that covers around four square miles.

Russia has reportedly started to re-import parts for tanks and missiles previously sold to India and Myanmar in an apparent attempt to upgrade older vehicles, such as those stored in Buryatia, before sending them to fight in Ukraine.

Under the rules of the Russian military, different types of weaponry and vehicles are supposed to be stored at different facilities, ranging from specialist warehouses with heating and ventilation to unheated hangars and outdoor holding areas. Typically, the oldest, less valuable types of weapons are stored outside.

Uralvagonzavod, Russia’s only tank factory that has also been manufacturing train cars, buses and metro carriages, said at the end of June it had stopped all non-military output to focus solely on the production of tanks.

Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president and now one of the top officials in charge of the military output, suggested in March that Russia will start producing 1,500 tanks a year.

But military analysts questioned his forecasts, arguing that Russia has no capacity to produce more than a few dozen to a few hundred tanks a year.