Before starting a newer count I decided to review the current one, because I was unsure about some BTR identifications. I decided to try Yandex. Alas, idk why I didn't use it before, there's so much newer footage there.
For example, the 4990th. Before the war there were over 600 MT-LBs, and we didn't get newer footage from that one in all these two years on Google Earth. But take a look at Yandex, just 91 MT-LBs remained there a while ago, three of them visibly broken hulls.
Another base we didn't got newer footage, the 230th. Here a lot of stuff is gone too.
All in all, of the total amount of MT-LBs we found during our updated count, these new Yandex images show that half of them are gone from storage already. Unfortunately, there's not much newer footage to significantly update our numbers of other AFV types.
Only a single base remains with a considerable amount of MT-LBs: the 7020th in the Far East, with 342 MT-LBs stored there as of May 2023. In every other base they're counted by the dozens, except at the 187th as of May 2022 where the number actually increased to 115.
This is the 7020th btw:
And the 187th:
I estimate the current number of MT-LBs in storage in 400-500, including 100 broken hulls. Consider that they started the war with 2,4k in storage and according to TMB2021 another 3k in active service.
Here are the prewar numbers in case someone didn't see this tweet.
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