According to Bloomberg, new data on military aid to Ukraine highlights a significant change in the balance of heavy weapons on the nation’s battlefields after 500 days of war. The Ukraine Support Tracker database maintained by Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy said Kyiv’s backers have delivered 471 new tanks since the start of the war, with a further 286 still to arrive, even as the rate of new pledges slows.
Combined with a tally of equipment lost or captured by the open source intelligence group Oryx, widely considered conservative, the figures suggest that Ukraine’s tank fleet has grown since the start of the invasion last year, even as Russia’s has been halved. The gap regarding artillery and multiple-launch rocket systems also narrowed, although by much smaller margins.
According to Oryx, which records only losses it can confirm, 2,082 Russian tanks have been destroyed, damaged, abandoned, or captured since the war. Moscow began with 3,417 tanks available, but now it has only 1,400 tanks. Ukraine started the war with less than 1,000 tanks and now has 1,500 tanks after 1.5 years of war.