Battle analysis: Russian tank armada vs Ukraine - who will win?

Kyiv surrounded by tanks

Russian defence ministry had recently released footage of Russian machinery and military equipment entering the Kyiv region amid a tank formation. Social media has been abuzz with Ukrainians setting up home-made anti-tank obstacles from tutorials found in the internet.

Russian defence ministry said it has destroyed 606 tanks among other heavy armaments. According to reports, Ukraine has approximately 2,550 tanks which includes light tanks and main battle tanks.

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Ukraine's T-64 battle tank

Ukraine uses the T-64 battle tank with a crew of three which entered into service in 2005 with a range of 385km. It was built in the former Soviet Union and entered service in the 1960s.

Ukraine operates the upgraded 47 Bulat MBTs which entered into service in 2011. It has a 125mm smoothbore gun and can operate in day and night condictions. It also possesses 12.7mm anti-aircraft machine gun and has composite armour for the turret and the hull.

The Ukrainian forces also have Soviet-made T-72 main battle tanks.

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Russia's T-14 Armata

Reports say Russia has 12,400 tanks which is the largest in the world with Ukraine possessing 2,586 tanks. Ukraine has 74 T-64 tanks against Russia's 2,000.

Ukraine also has 3,666 T-72 tanks however Russia has nearly twice that number at 9,950. Clearly as far as size is concerned the tank strength of the two countries is greatly mismatched.

Russia has in fact developed the T-14 Armata and has already produced 2,300 even since it was unveiled in 2015. It was battle-tested in Syria. It has state of the art laser-guided missiles with Kord 12.7mm and PKTM 7.62mm machine gun.

The T-14 can reportedly withstand nuclear, biological and chemical attacks. Russia currently has 20 T-14s which could prove to be a big hurdle for Ukraine's forces.

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Ukraine loses tanks in Crimea tussle

The Russian forces had reportedly deployed 1,200 tanks before the invasion in various sectors across the border with Ukraine which included the T90s and T-72s.

Ukraine had said earlier that it had lost at least 440 tanks between 2014 to 2016 to Russian fire as Putin seized Crimea. Reports claim Ukraine has been upgrading its battle tanks for some years.

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Russia's mammoth tank squad in 1992

According to SIPRI, Russia had a mammoth 52,660 tanks in 1992 just after the breakup of the former Soviet Union which dwindled to 13 290 in 2017.

Every year Russia conducts a large number of military exercises of varying sizes, it says, adding that these include large joint-service exercises with foreign partners, staff war games, exercises of specific services and combat readiness inspections.

Russia has held more than 10 000 military exercises since 2014. Clearly, its forces have been in combat readiness for several years.

Since 2014 a significant number of military exercises have been held in the Southern Military District, including military training on the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, it informed.

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Russia's military spending increases

Russia is one of the largest military spenders in the world and it was the fourth largest in 2017. After falling precipitously from 1992 to 1998, Russia’s military spending grew in real terms every year between 1999 and 2016.

In 2016 it was five times higher than in 1998, the think tank added.

According to official Russian reports, the share of "modern armaments" in the Russian armed forces increased almost four-fold between 2012 and 2017, reaching 58.9 per cent in 2017.

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Cold War & Russia, NATO tank strength

As the Cold War began to wind down in 1989, NATO had 11, 829 battle tanks with 5,000 belonging to the US however the Warsaw Pact countries had a mammoth 29,305 tanks with the former Soviet Union having 18,180 tanks, according to a RAND report.

Poland’s tank fleet has dropped from about 1,700 at the time of its accession into NATO in 1999 to just under 1,000 by 2016, of which about three-quarters are obsolete T-72M variants.

A Rand report highlighted that in 2017 NATO had positioned 129 battle tanks in active units or near Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania with Russia deploying 757 of its tanks.

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Russia continues to expand military strength

Russia continues to expand its ground forces in the West. By 2020, Russia’s Western MD’s three armies will have grown to a total of three motor rifle divisions, three airborne divisions, a tank division, and four combined-arms brigades, as well as numerous other combat and supporting brigades, the Rand report said.

Russia still enjoys a substantial time-distance advantage in the initial days and weeks of a conventional ground campaign against the Baltic States, the report said.

(Photograph:AFP)