During the Kursk offensive, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFK) lost too many tanks, Forbes reported.
In this indicator, the battle for the Russian Kursk region, where the Ukrainian army carried out a surprise invasion in the summer of last year, is fundamentally different from other points on the front.
Since the start of the full-scale invasion, which has been going on for over 3 years, the Russians have lost no less than 3,200 tanks in battle, according to Oryx data, while Kiev's losses are 950 tanks. This means that the Russians are losing more than 3 times more than the Ukrainians.
In Kursk, however, the statistics are radically different and the ratio is almost 1:1. The Russians have lost 66 tanks, while the Ukrainians – 55. This is bad news for Ukraine, which, according to a recent analysis, would have to inflict three times as many casualties as Russia to stay in the fight. Russia has far greater resources in military equipment and manpower than the Ukrainians.
During the invasion, which ended in a Ukrainian retreat last week, the Russians destroyed or captured more tanks than the Ukrainians could afford to lose.
The Ukrainian armed forces entered the war in February 2022 with about 1,000 operational tanks — mostly former Soviet T-64s and T-72s. Having lost about 950 tanks at the front, received about 850 more as donations from their allies, and taken others from long-term storage in Ukraine, the Ukrainians still have... at least 1,000 tanks.
The Russian armed forces entered the war three years ago with about 3,500 active tanks - T-72s, T-80s, and T-90s - and have lost 3,200 to Ukrainian action. Russian industry builds 500 or 600 new tanks a year, but the Kremlin also has access to thousands of stockpiled tanks, many of them T-62s and T-54s, dating from the 1960s and 1950s, respectively.
The Ukrainian tank corps is gradually becoming more modern as it adopts more Western-made tanks. Russia is at the opposite end of the scale in this regard, relying mostly on very old tanks.
But not in Kursk, a veritable graveyard for armored vehicles due to the relatively small scale of the battlefield in the area, the high concentration of Russian and Ukrainian forces, and, most critically, the large number of explosive drones patrolling above them.
In the Kursk region, the Russians deprived Kiev of a much-needed victory. According to Frontelligence Insight, a Ukrainian analytical group, the 1-to-1 loss ratio is “an unfavorable scenario for Ukraine in a war of attrition, given its smaller initial stockpile and limited ability to replace lost combat vehicles.”