Russia is 'going backwards' and will increasingly have to rely on Cold War-era weapons, experts and Western officials say
- Russia's military equipment is "going backwards" amid battlefield losses, Western officials say.
- One think tank said Russia will increasingly have to turn to Cold War-era stock.
Russia's military is "going backwards" when it comes to the quality of weaponry and equipment it is using in Ukraine, Western officials said, with experts saying it's now turning to older stockpiles that date from the early days of the Cold War.
During a briefing on Tuesday, unnamed Western officials said that they hadn't seen "a large uptick in increasing equipment" and that "if anything, the equipment [the Russians] are using is older generation," CNN reported.
"They started with the T-80 and T-90 [tanks], went down to T-72, and indeed, we saw the first T-55s rolled out of the refurbishment to be put into battle and the same picture across artillery pieces as well," the officials said, per CNN.
Multiple monitoring groups have also reported T-55 tanks, which the Soviet Union began producing in 1948, shortly after the end of World War II, being brought out of storage.
The officials' comments were backed up by those from Washington DC-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which said on Wednesday that heavy battlefield losses meant that "the quality of the Russian military in terms of advanced equipment will likely decline, at least over the near term."
It also said that sanctions had cut Russian access to technologies like optical systems, for which Russia has previously relied on French imports.
This meant that new tanks are being fitted with older, less sophisticated systems that could resulting in a loss of up to 1.24 miles in firing range, according to CNN reporting.
But the think tank said that while Russia was having difficulty making new weapons, it might have enough older ones, and could use the sheer volume of older weapons to try make up for what it lost in terms of advanced technology.
Russia is losing around 150 tanks a month in Ukraine, according to an analysis by open source intelligence platform Oryx, which estimates that Russia lost 1,779 tanks between February 2022 and February 2023.
This has resulted in Russia relying on older equipment, including at least one elite Russian unit fighting with 60-year-old T-62 tanks.
Russia is struggling to make tanks fast enough, partly due to Western sanctions aimed at denying it the materials it needs to make some advanced equipment.
One Western official told The Economist in February that Russia's need for new tanks was ten times higher than its ability to produce them.