Back
Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Recently information was released that the Russians allegedly began stockpiling relatively new combat equipment at their storage bases, such as T-90M and T-72B3 tanks, BTR-82A armored personnel carriers, BMP-3 and BMD-4M infantry fighting vehicles, tracked 2S19 "Msta-S" self-propelled guns and wheeled 2S44 "Hyacinth-K" self-propelled guns.
As Defense Express writes, this raises the question of how to interpret the process described in the first paragraph of this text.
"If one takes literally what OSINT analyst Jompy writes, the Russians began concentrating the listed types of armored vehicles only at a limited number of storage bases — for example, the 80 and 374 bases near the border with Finland, where they are stockpiling wheeled 2S43 'Malva' and 2S44 'Hyacinth-K', the 22 base in Arkhangelsk region of the Russian Federation — T-90M, BTR-82A and BMP-3, and the 6018 base (near the border with Central Asia) — BMP-3M and BMD-4M," the article says.
In their view, it is still difficult to discern any clear pattern in the geography of the equipment accumulation.
"Especially given that the main detail is missing — whether this equipment was withdrawn from the Russian army's combat units, or whether these are newly produced vehicles that went straight from factory shops into preservation in the hangars of storage bases created back in Soviet times. Against that background, initial assumptions may arise that the Russian army has simply begun to abandon heavy weaponry as supposedly irrelevant across all branches of the armed forces," the analysts noted.
They recalled that armored warfare historian Andriy Tarasenko claims the Russian army has allegedly begun reducing the number of existing armored units. Although, for example, as of autumn 2025 the trend looked somewhat different: the authoritative analytical agency Janes claimed that the Russians were actually increasing the formal number of armored units while the actually available numbers of T-72B3, T-80BV and T-90M fell.
"On the other hand, one must also consider another possibility. The storage bases at the disposal of the Russian army are an element of the 'Soviet legacy', in particular of the mobilization system that provided for three possible readiness gradations, where 'cadre divisions' would be deployed in the third echelon, for which equipment was precisely accumulated in storage," the experts added.
The analysts believe that if the Russian Federation has begun again to accumulate equipment in storage, it may be preparing to recreate analogs of 'cadre divisions' which, upon the appropriate order, must be ready in a short time to attack countries in NATO's European segment.
Russian weapons
The Russian design bureau Tupolev stated that about 80% of the systems and equipment of the strategic bomber Tu-160M have been modernized, and that the aircraft's onboard electronics were developed with a modular architecture.
According to Tupolev's general director Yuriy Abrosimov, the Tu-160M retained the external appearance of the Soviet-era Tu-160 supersonic bomber, but many of its systems — including avionics, navigation and engines — have been modernized.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Експерти пояснили, для чого Росія почала "накопичувати" у запас свою бронетехніку". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: UNIAN.
