Russia Unknowingly Arms Ukraine With Most Advanced War Tanks As Soldiers Flee Battlegrounds

Ukraine has supposedly started to field Russia’s most modern main battle tanks in active service, the T-90s, following reports that Russian soldiers abandoned their equipment in the face of recent Ukrainian advances.

“Thanks to the generosity of the Russian Federation, the first batch of new T-90A tanks entered into service with [the Ukrainian Army],” Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense (MOD) said in a statement released Thursday.

Russia reportedly touted the T-90s as some of the country’s most advanced tanks in its arsenal, a majority of which is made up of older vehicles such as the T-72.

The T-90 series’ latest variant, the T-90M “Proryv”—Russian for “breakthrough”—boasts improved protection, mobility and firepower compared to its predecessors.

However, the T-90s have not lived up to the hype in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to Business Insider.

At least 12 T-90As and one T-90M have been destroyed in the ongoing conflict, according to Oryx, an open-source analytical project that tracks military equipment losses.

The project has been able to confirm the destruction of a total of 1,328 Russian tanks in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, another dozen T-90As and one more T-90M have been captured in Ukraine so far, Oryx reported.

The Ukrainian military revealed nearly a month ago that it had captured a T-90M in Ukraine’s partially Russian-occupied Kharkiv region.

Russian forces in the region abandoned heavy weapons and supply depots during a disorganized retreat in the face of a recent Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Russia is now reportedly the largest supplier of heavy weapons to Ukraine following the latter’s recent gains.

Amid its losses, Russia has started to equip its forces with older tanks such as the T-62, a Soviet-era vehicle that first entered service in 1961.

The Ukrainian MOD said in its Thursday statement that Russia was being “particularly generous” as the Russians were restoring their T-62 tanks while Ukraine was starting to field T-90As.

Russia still appears to be producing T-90s, which some Russian media sources pointed to as evidence of the resiliency of the country’s armed industry, Business Insider reported.

Uralvagonzavod, the largest main battle tank manufacturer in the world, announced in early August that it had delivered a batch of T-90Ms to the Russian military.

The discovery of French optronic technology in a T-90 captured by Ukrainian forces has reportedly still raised questions about the durability of the supply chains that support the tank’s production.