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By Ellie Cook
Senior Defense Reporter
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Russian forces have lost 16 tanks and 13 armored personnel vehicles (APVs) in 24 hours, according to Ukraine's military, as Kyiv pushes on with its counteroffensive in southern and eastern Ukraine.
Russia has lost a total of 4,278 tanks since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces said in an update on Thursday morning. Fighting over the past day brings Russia's APV losses to 8,303, according to Kyiv.
Newsweek could not independently verify the General Staff's figures, and has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry via email for comment. Russia's Defense Ministry on Thursday said Ukraine had lost 11,216 tanks and other armored combat vehicles during the war.
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Russia's tank fleet has been decimated, and experts say Moscow's troops abandoned many salvageable tanks in the initial phases of the war that also wiped out many of its elite and most experienced crews.
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Analysts told Newsweek in mid-June that the Ukrainian General Staff's figure of 4,000 tanks lost was staggering, but likely close to the mark. It likely includes some armored vehicles as well as main battle tanks, experts said, but nonetheless showed a substantial dent in Russia's pre-war stocks.
Other estimates, such as that published by Dutch open-source intelligence outlet Oryx, put Russia's main battle tank losses at 2,207 since the invasion. However, that includes only visually verified losses, so the true tally is likely higher.
In February 2023, the International Institute of Strategic Studies think tank estimated that Russia's military had lost about 40 percent of its pre-war tank stocks nine months into the war.
During a visit to a Russian tank factory in early February 2023, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Moscow needed to increase production of various armaments, including modern tanks.
Russia's top leaders are likely conscious that Moscow's military-industrial production is becoming a critical weakness, that its war in Ukraine has only worsened, the British Defense Ministry said on February 15, following Medvedev's visit.
Moscow has turned to pulling its mothballed, Soviet-era tanks from storage facilities, although analysts said these older vehicles would be far less effective than updated and better-maintained tanks. Some of these tanks and armored, described as antiquated by the U.K. Defense Ministry, were cannibalized for parts, and others used as improved explosive devices.
Russian forces were using vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs) in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, with the tank's crew likely evacuating the vehicle after setting it on its course, the British government said in mid-July.
"However, these VBIEDs cause extremely large explosions, which are still likely to have a psychological effect on defending forces," the U.K. ministry added.
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