Russia’s best tanks attack – and are “dismantled for spare parts”

In April 2022, Russian forces attacked Marinka, a frontline town in eastern Ukraine west of Donetsk. After 20 months of bloody fighting that razed Marinka, once home to 9,000 people, the Russians fully occupied the town in December.

This opened a route to Kurachiv, a Ukrainian stronghold 13 kilometers west on Road O0510. But actually reaching Kurachiv – either by road or across the fields to the south – proved difficult for the Russian Army’s 150th Motorized Rifle Division and neighboring units.

On Thursday or shortly before, a Russian formation rolled across the fields – and was “disassembled … to deliver spare parts,” boasted the Ukrainian 79th Air Assault Brigade.

Buried mines have disabled three tanks. Drones and apparently anti-tank missiles finished them off. Two armored personnel carriers were damaged. Drones destroyed at least one motorcycle and then pursued and killed six Russian soldiers.

A Russian survivor sought shelter in the ruins of a fighting-damaged building – only to be torn to pieces by a Ukrainian Air Force fighter jet that dropped a satellite-guided bomb, said Anton Gerashchenko, a former adviser to the Ukrainian interior minister.

“The column did not reach the Ukrainian positions,” Gerashchenko noted.

The Russians’ defeat is nothing unusual. Most Russian attacks along this axis do not go very far. The Ukrainian Defense Strategy Center counted 14 attacks in the region on Thursday and 12 on Wednesday.

The composition of the forces deployed by the Russians is unusual. According to the 79th Air Assault Brigade, the Russian formation included brand new T-72B3M tanks with all the latest equipment – anti-drone cage armor, radio jammers and mine-clearing rollers – as well as an assortment of armored personnel carriers and soldiers on motorcycles.

In this sense, the attack group included both the best and the worst members of the Russian military, as the large-scale invasion of Ukraine continues into its 29th month.

The 47-ton, three-person T-72B3M is one of only two types of tank produced in Russia, the other being the heavier T-90M. Russian industry produces between 500 and 600 new T-72s and T-90s each year. That’s many more tanks than any other country produces in a year, but far too few to make up for the roughly 1,200 tanks that Russian forces lose in Ukraine each year.

To bridge the gap between tank production and tank losses, the Kremlin is bringing old tanks out of long-term storage – T-54/55 from the 1950s, T-62 from the 1960s, and older T-72 and T-80 from the 1970s and 1980s.

As old models make up an ever-increasing proportion of the 3,000-strong Russian tank corps, these brand-new T-72B3Ms are becoming increasingly rare. And that certainly makes their complete destruction in failed attacks like the one around Kurakhiv particularly painful for the Russians.

It is significant that the assault group that was going to attack Kurakhiv had fewer infantry fighting vehicles than tanks. The Kremlin is having difficulty acquiring replacement tanks, but it is having even greater difficulty acquiring replacements for infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers.

This is apparently why motorcycle troops were also in the group. As armored vehicles become increasingly rare and valuable in the Russian military, they are increasingly being replaced by civilian vehicles – trucks, off-road vehicles and motorcycles.

And they are dismantled at least as quickly as the tanks and armored personnel carriers.

Sources:

1. 79th Air Assault Brigade: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1173826133728731&vanity=79AMBUA&paipv=0&eav=AfYsVrGx9blVOUgL8RvLgUJILC7nP2TliAUn3isriI7SaQsGQE3493NY-6YTs_2Nhi0&_rdr

2. Center for Defense Security: https://cdsdailybrief.substack.com/p/russias-war-on-ukraine-180724; https://cdsdailybrief.substack.com/p/russias-war-on-ukraine-180724

3. Anton Gerashchenko: