“They just left their tanks, artillery, special equipment, a lot of armor, and were just trying to save their lives,” a Ukrainian military official told Foreign Policy, speaking on condition of anonymity to provide an update on ongoing military operations.

With poorly trained Russian units, some cobbled together from Russia ’s national guard and police forces, falling away from the front lines, Ukrainian forces stumbled upon an embarrassment of riches on the battlefield. Open-source tracker Oryx found that the captured Russian equipment varied from BMP-2 amphibious infantry fighting vehicles to scores of tanks, including T-80 variant tanks that date back to the 1980s, which experts pegged at about half of the combat-ready inventory.

The harvest of Russian armor is something that Ukraine now plans to use against the flagging Russian military.Īs Russian forces surrendered more than 2,300 square miles to advancing Ukrainian troops in a little over a week-more ground than Russia has taken in the last five months of fighting-some troops running for their lives left vast stashes of Soviet-era weaponry, which the defending Ukrainians can now operate, including at least 17 vehicles on Monday alone. Ukraine’s military has captured over 200 Russian vehicles in a more than weeklong offensive that has seen the war-torn country reconquer most of Kharkiv Oblast, a Ukrainian military official told Foreign Policy.

Russian main battle tank list