Lonely Red Square Tank Speaks of Russia’s Growing Shortages of Military Equipment

A lone World War II-era T-34 tank clanked across the cobblestones of Moscow’s Red Square yesterday, passing a triumphant banner proclaiming: “1945 2024 Victory!” As a red and gold hammer and sickle flag flapped in unseasonal snow flurries, the lonely tank raised the question: where are the others?During the Putin era, the anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany traditionally has been celebrated by columns of late model tanks. Yesterday’s lone museum piece seemed to signal that, after two years of a full-fledged war with Ukraine, Russia’s military hardware cupboard is increasingly bare.The numbers indicate that Ukraine has delivered an ax blow to what once was the most powerful army in Europe. On the low end, Netherlands-based research group Oryx has visually confirmed the destruction or capture of almost 3,000 Russian tanks. On the high end, Ukraine’s military tots up the loss of 7,429 tanks, including 11 taken out Wednesday.Open-source twitter account Jompy, which tracks Russian military depots, says Russia has pulled out of storage one third of the 15,152 armored vehicles it had in 2021. In one category, BMD amphibious tracked vehicles, analysis of satellite photos shows a precipitous drop: to 244, from 637 before the invasion.Another open source intelligence X account, Marsed, posted Wednesday satellite photos that indicate that Russia has towed from storage about 60 percent of stored artillery systems. Of the remaining cannons, Marsed speculated, half may be unusable because of decay in storage or reliance on outdated ammunition.“Recent satellite imagery of depleted Russian military vehicle and weapon storage facilities further indicates that Russia is currently sustaining its war effort largely by pulling from storage rather than by manufacturing new vehicles and certain weapons at scale,” the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War wrote Wednesday. “Russia is relying on vast Soviet-era stores of vehicles and other equipment to sustain operations and losses in Ukraine at a level far higher than the current Russian [defense industry] could support.”In one humiliating exercise, the Yakovlev Corporation, producer of Su-30 fighter jets, has spent almost $1 billion over the last three years to buy back its own airplane parts from Third World air forces, the Moscow Times reported Wednesday, citing customs documents. According to Oryx, Ukraine has shot down 11 S-30s and 25 Su-34 strike aircraft. With the arrival in Ukraine this summer of American-made F-16 fighter jets, the toll of Russian fighter jets is expected to climb. Yakovlev can only make a few dozen a year.Yesterday over Red Square, acrobatic teams of Su-30s and MiG-29s painted the sky the white, blue and red colors of the Russian flag. On the ground, the military fielded an impressive array of Yars intercontinental ballistic missile launchers. Designed to launch city-destroying nuclear weapons, these missiles are of limited battlefield use. However, given that a primary purpose of the parade is to intimidate the West, missile launchers are useful.“Russia will do everything to prevent global confrontation, but will not allow anyone to threaten us,” President Putin said in the only allusion to nuclear weapons in his short speech yesterday. “Our strategic forces are in combat readiness.”Mr. Putin made only brief mention to the elephant in the room: the war in Ukraine. A detachment of 1,000 Ukraine war veterans marched past the Kremlin reviewing stand. Earlier, at his inauguration on Tuesday, he told the nation: “I want to bow to our heroes, the participants of the special military operation, to all those who are fighting for the Fatherland.”In reality, the war is not going well for the Kremlin. Last May, Russia lost an estimated 40,000 soldiers to conquer Bakhmut, a small city in Donetsk region. One year later, the Russians are trying to capture Chasiv Yar, a smaller city five miles to the West.This week, a video went viral of a non-commissioned officer haranguing Ukraine-bound troops: “All of you will die. But Mother Russia will never forget you!”Indeed, since May 1, Russia has lost on a daily average 1,111 soldiers killed or severely wounded. The strategy, borrowed from World War II, is to sacrifice poorly trained troops in order to force Ukrainian soldiers to reveal their firing positions. For lack of armored personnel carriers, some Russian soldiers go to battle on motorcycles or golf carts. Plagued by Ukrainian drones, one Russian soldier made a video appeal for shotguns — the most effective weapons against the airborne attackers.Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, who stood in an open car yesterday to review the troops, announced last week that since the start of this year, Russian soldiers have “liberated” 211 square miles. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry says that 117,420 Russian soldiers have been killed or severely wounded since the start of this year. If accurate, this means that Russia has lost almost one soldier for each acre acquired. This is a high price to pay for a nation that has the largest territory in the world, but an aging population. With this huge human toll, Russia’s generals evidently hoped to have a battlefield “victory” to offer Mr. Putin on Victory Day. Instead, they settled for the massive bombing of Ukrainian power plants on Wednesday. Over the last month, Russian cruise missiles and drones have destroyed about $1 billion worth of Ukrainian power plants.Russia’s FSB, the successor agency to Mr. Putin’s KGB, came up with their own idea for an inauguration “gift” for Mr. Putin. They bribed two high colonels in Ukraine’s federal protection service in a plot to kidnap and kill Ukraine’s president. According to a post on the Telegram channel of the State Security Service, or SBU, the plotters planned to kill Mr. Zelensky, SBU head Vasyl Maliuk, and military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov. All three men have been targets of repeated Russian assassination plots.While Ukraine is largely in a defensive crouch in the ground war, it marked Victory Day, celebrated in Ukraine on Wednesday, with a series of drone attacks. Signaling to Russians that Mr. Putin can no longer protect them, Ukraine sent drones into three neighboring Russian regions — Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk. Videos emerged from Belgorod of burning cars and blasted apartment buildings. The target of repeated drone attacks since December, Belgorod has become Russia’s first regional capital to look like a ghost town.This week, Ukraine also hit three Russian energy storage facilities — an oil depot in Russian-controlled Luhansk and, near Anapa, two tank farms that supplied fuel to Russia-occupied Crimea. Then, yesterday morning a Ukrainian kamikaze drone set a distance record by flying almost 1,000 miles east to set ablaze a Gazprom refinery in Bashkiria. This oil-rich region is in the foothills of the Urals. Meanwhile, in Moscow, Russia’s press capital, these attacks were ignored and the image-makers worked overtime to polish Mr. Putin’s image of invincibility.“The sight of a lone tank on Red Square this week is a timely reminder that behind the facade of overwhelming strength, Putin’s Russia is far from invincible,” Atlantic Council Ukraine editor Peter Dickinson wrote last night. “The Russian military remains a formidable force and should not be underestimated, but the events of the past two years have demonstrated that it is also very much beatable.”

Lonely Red Square Tank Speaks of Russia’s Growing Shortages of Military Equipment

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