Thousands of tanks destroyed, with T-80 bearing the brunt of Russian losses in Ukraine
Russia has lost thousands of tanks in Ukraine – with one piece of armour in particular bearing the brunt of the destruction.
The T-80 was designed in the 1970s and has been upgraded several times, but more than 1,000 are believed to have been destroyed in the conflict.
At the start of 2024, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a leading authority on global security, political risk and military conflict, put the figure at 3,000 – the equivalent of Russia's entire pre-war stock of working tanks.
How many have they lost?
The open-source investigative project Oryx has visually confirmed 3,673 losses and the figure is now believed to be somewhere between 3,000 and 8,000.
One main battle tank in particular has taken huge losses – the Soviet-era T-80.
By December 2024, at least 1,035 of them were confirmed as destroyed, damaged, abandoned or captured.
Originally derived from the T-64, it was the world's first mass-produced tank with a gas turbine engine – the GTD 1000.
Designed to be fast, quiet and highly mobile – it can travel at 40mph off-road.
Somewhere between 7,000 and 10,000 T-80s were produced between 1975 and 2001, including several variants such as the T-80B and the T-80U, which was fitted with reactive armour and a bigger 1,250 horsepower gas turbine engine.
Russia used them in Chechnya, but they suffered heavy losses, where 18 of the 84 T-80s involved in the Battle of Grozny were lost.
And in Ukraine, they've not done much better
The T-80 guzzles fuel and only has a 300-mile range. Its weapon systems also aren't a match for the Western tanks Ukraine has been gifted.
Russian tanks, including the T-72, T-80 and T-90, also use a carousel autoloader and store their ammunition inside the turret.
So if they're hit by a drone or anti-tank missile in the right spot, the so-called "turret toss" is often the result, where a catastrophic explosion violently knocks a tank's turret off its chassis and into the air.
The turret toss is the reason Russian tank crews are said to have nicknamed the T-80 the "steel coffin".
Online, video has surfaced which it is claimed shows Russian forces retrieving damaged tanks from the battlefield – a sign the Kremlin is struggling to replace what it's losing.
Russian mil-bloggers say Moscow has now deployed 90% of all the T-80s it had available. They're either sent to the frontline or to a factory at Omsk in Siberia, where they are upgraded to the latest variant, the T-80BVM.
Why more of the T-80 BVM?
Satellite imagery of the plant taken last year showed T-80s parked up, ready to be converted. In April last year, Russia resumed production of the GTD 1,250 gas turbine engines used in the T-80BVM.
Soon afterwards, the head of Russia's largest tank manufacturer announced it was also resuming round-the-clock production of the T-80 BVM at the Omsk factory – this was taken as a sign Moscow was in the conflict for the long haul.
One reason Moscow wants more of the BVM model is its ability to fire depleted Uranium rounds, and the US has supplied Ukraine with these to use in the M1 Abrams it's given to Kyiv.
Russia's former defence minister Sergei Shoigu, who is a long-time ally of Vladimir Putin, was filmed touring the site promising to increase production to 2,000 tanks a year.
The BVM model has reactive armour, anti-drone and anti-missile protection grids, and an upgraded fire control system.
But even with this new production flow, Russia is only just covering its losses – the UK Ministry of Defence estimates Moscow is losing 100 tanks a month in Ukraine.
So how many tanks does Russia have left?
Finding a precise answer is pretty much impossible.
Estimates vary widely, but it's thought Russia had around 6,000 tanks in storage, going all the way back to T-54s and T-55s.
Reports say a factory like Omsk can refurbish or upgrade around 350 tanks a month, but the quality of the production is falling because of sanctions.
What's also unclear is how many T-80s are left.
Oryx estimates that half of the T-80Us that have been lost were abandoned by their crews, possibly because of a lack of fuel, rather than being destroyed by Ukrainian fire.
While Russia's losses have been astronomical, Moscow has deep reserves.
It's also adapted its tactics, launching dismounted infantry assaults rather than using massed armour.
And with Russia making slow grinding gains, the tally of tank losses doesn't necessarily tell the full story.
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