The Russian military has potentially lost half of its entire operational tank fleet since the onset of the Ukraine war, according to information collected by an open-source intelligence group.
On its intelligence website, Oryx reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin has had difficulty meeting his strategic goals for the Russia-Ukraine military conflict, given the country's depleted resources with tanks and personnel.
"Russia started the war with around 3,000 operational tanks ... so there is a good chance that Russia has lost one half of (its) usable tanks," said Jakub Janovsky, a military analyst who contributes to the Oryx blog.
By Janovsky's estimates, Russia has incurred 1,000 tank losses in the war, and more than 540 Russian tanks have been captured by Ukrainian armed forces during this period.
Throw in the nearly 80 damaged tanks, and 65 abandoned tanks, and Russia's casualty toll with military tanks could be in the 1,700 range, added Janovsky.
Last February, prior to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Janovsky estimated that Moscow had a reserve supply of approximately 4,000 military-grade tanks.
However, many of the tanks "were not properly stored and might be hard to reactivate quickly," he added.
Back in December, Newsmax chronicled an intelligence source saying that Russia had lost 24 military-grade tanks in a single day.
The same source also speculated the Russians' casualty count for the ongoing war — after nine-plus months then — was steadily approaching 100,000 troops.
CNN reports that Ukraine has received pledges of modern tanks from Britain, Germany, the United States, and other Western partners. And these tanks reportedly possess superior technology to Russia's diminishing fleet of operational tanks.