Prison rules, “meat grinder” assaults, and golf carts instead of tanks: The state of the Russian army after two years of war

Over more than two years of Russia’s full-scale assault on Ukraine, the invaders’ military-industrial complex has seriously expanded the production of major types of weapons and military equipment — at least if official figures are to be believed — and Western intelligence agencies appear to believe at least some of them. For example, a CNN source spoke of the delivery of 1,500 tanks per year, while Russian ex-Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported a similar figure — 1,530 tanks. However, the same American source rightly noted that most of the Russian equipment making its way to the battlefield is not new, but has either been modernized or was simply taken out of storage. At the same time, Russia’s most modern equipment, such as the T-14 Armata tank, is not used in Ukraine due to the small number and high cost of such pieces of equipment in the Russian arsenal.

In practice, the Russian Armed Forces rely on increasingly obsolete equipment. Its losses of more modern tanks and IFVs during the fighting for Avdiivka this past winter were relatively small, while Soviet-era models accounted for most of the destroyed, damaged, and abandoned equipment. Last year, The Insider reported on the appearance of such long-retired tank models as the T-55 and T-62, along with BTR-50 armored personnel carriers (APCs) among the Russian Army’s mechanized ranks. This antique equipment was used by Russia’s 21st century military in assault operations during the battle of Avdiivka (1, 2, 3).

In some cases, old tanks are used not for their intended purpose, but as “infantry taxis” on the battlefield. In order to protect these vehicles, they are modified with additional defenses that transform them into monstrous structures known as “tsar mangals” — literally “king of grills” — or, in Western parlance, as “turtle tanks,” The practice of sending infantry into battle riding atop tanks hearkens back to World War II, when Soviet industry did not produce any armored personnel carriers, and supplies of such vehicles under the Lend-Lease program were scarce.

At the same time, the huge number of Russian vehicles destroyed looks relatively small compared with Moscow’s many thousands of personnel losses. In practice, the level of the Russian Army’s mechanization seems to be slipping back to the 1940s, when infantry units without armored vehicles were the backbone of the Red Army.