Thread by @partizan_oleg

I tried to sort out Russian T-72 stockpiles with limited sources and many assumptions, and here it is: 1/n

https://twitter.com/oryxspioenkop/status/1633151930955362308

Russian military basically stopped to build new T-72 hulls for its own armed forces since the fall of the Soviet Union. From 2013 some 1100 T-72B3/B3Ms were converted from existing T-72B hulls. So the Russian T-72 stockpile maintained unchanged since 1991. 2/n

According to Internet sources (!!) that I can not 100% be sure, some 18,000 T-72s were made before the Soviet breakup. 3/n

According to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)'s International Arms Transfer Database (which is, frankly speaking, not 100% accurate), some 7400 T-72s were exported by the USSR from 1970 to 1991. 4/n

According to V.Feskov (2013) , a total of 5144 T-72s were fielded by the USSR as of late 1980s in the CFE area (excl. Siberia, Central Asian, Turkestan, Transbaikal, and Far East MDs). A couple of divisions were missing in these charts but they won't make a big difference. 5/n

Post-USSR Central Asian republics (Turkestan+Central Asian MD) obtained some 1800-2000 T-72s. 6/n

The Transbaikal MD (incl. the 39th Army in Mongolia) was another major user of the T-72: no less than 1400 should had been fielded; the Far Eastern MD, however, was fielded with T-80s. 7/n

If we add these numbers up, we have the number of 7400+5144+1800+1400=15700. Given that the first batch of T-72s were introduced in 1970, which was 20 yrs before the end of the Soviet Army, it is possible that some 2000 early T-72 Urals had already been retired from service. 8/n

The Soviet Army ended in 1991 with some 8300 T-72 tanks. Among them, ~1800 were acquired by Central Asian countries, ~800 acquired by Trancaucasus countries, ~1160 acquired by Belarus, ~600 by Ukraine. 9/n

Russian Federation also exported some 500 T-72s (excluding those newly-built for India) from 1991-2021. That gives the number left as 3440. I think this may be close to the actual number of T-72s that Russian has got before the war. Among them some 1961 were in active service.10/

What was unexpected by me is that the calculated amount of T-72s (some 1500) in storage is much fewer than what I assumed before. (I thought there could have been 7000!) And many of them are probably not in a good shape. 11/n

https://twitter.com/partizan_oleg/status/1625344309565468674

Now that 1000 T-72s are confirmed lost by @oryxspioenkop , which was 1/2 of Russian's pre-war active T-72 fleet and maybe more than 1/3.5 of its total T-72 fleet. I think the actual loss number should be ~40% higher (1400 pieces lost/unserviceable). 12/n

The more important thing is that it may already have been impossible for the Russians to compensate its T-72 losses from its reserve even with earlier types e.g. the T-72 Ural. 13/end