Russia trying to hide large-scale losses of equipment in war against Ukraine

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) shared the information in its report.

On February 9, Russian leader Vladimir Putin held a meeting of the Supervisory Board of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives and instructed the agency to support the subjects of the federation in the development of unmanned aerial systems.

On the same day, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev visited a tank factory in the Omsk region and said that Russia needs to increase production of various weapons, including modern tanks, in response to Western military aid to Ukraine.

"Fifteen hundred tanks are enough to equip more than 15 tank regiments or brigades or about 150 battalion tactical groups," the report said.

According to ISW experts, the Russian military needs to quickly replenish losses in tanks in order to maintain the ability to conduct large-scale mechanized maneuver operations ahead of a possible increase in the pace of offensive operations in eastern Ukraine.

At the same time, experts emphasize that the Kremlin's efforts to gradually prepare Russia's defense-industrial base for a protracted war without broader mobilization of the Russian economy are incompatible with the scale of the war being waged by the Russian military.

• On February 9, Oryx, a Dutch monitoring group, estimated that Russia has lost up to 1,000 tanks since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which is half of the arsenal it had before February 24, 2022. In addition, Oryx estimates that more than 500 tanks captured by the Ukrainian Armed Forces fully cover their loss of 459 units.