Latest news with #T-90M
South China Morning Post
05-05-2025
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
Russia repels drones flying towards Moscow, days before Red Square military parade
Russian authorities on Monday said defence forces had repelled four drones heading towards Moscow, days before foreign leaders were due to gather for a military parade on the capital's Red Square. Advertisement Defence forces in the district of Podolsk 'repelled an attack of four drones flying towards Moscow', Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said in a post on Telegram. There were no initial reports of damage or casualties at the site where the debris had fallen, Sobyanin said, adding that emergency services specialists were working at the scene. A total of 26 Ukrainian drones targeting Russian territory were destroyed overnight, Russia's defence ministry said on Monday. Russian T-90M tanks during a rehearsal for the Victory Day parade. Photo: AFP In addition to the drones downed on their approach to Moscow, 17 drones were destroyed over the Bryansk region and five over the Kaluga region, the ministry said in a post on the Telegram messaging app. Advertisement
Forbes
30-03-2025
- Politics
- Forbes
A Tank Wrecked Ukraine's Razor Wire. So The Ukrainians Sent In Robots.
The immobilized T-90M. An overconfident, flag-waving Russian assault outside Pokrovsk on Thursday left behind ruined Russian vehicles and at least one smoldering corpse. It also wrecked a razor-wire barrier Ukrainian forces had erected to slow down Russian attacks. As one Ukrainian blogger pointed out, the Ukrainians swiftly repaired the barrier breach—apparently by deploying one of their razor-wire-hauling ground robots. The Thursday assault was an outlier. Short of purpose-made armored vehicles, Russian regiments increasingly attack on foot or in civilian vehicles. But the Kremlin is trying to restore momentum to its faltering assault on the fortress city of Pokrovsk—and marshalled a dozen armored vehicles including at least one modern T-90M tank. But the armored attack ran into a wall of Ukrainian artillery and drones—and a mass of flesh-shredding, vehicle-entangling razor wire. The assault was 'unnecessary confirmation of the offensive weakness of the Russians,' a second Ukrainian blogger noted. A Ukrainian ground robot lays razor wire. The T-90, apparently damaged, its crew either dead or about to bail out, rolled through the wire before grinding to a halt. Overnight on Thursday, someone—or something—repaired the gap in the wire. A Ukrainian aerial drone survey the following morning depicted a fresh stretch of wire around the tank. Special Kherson Cat, who blogs from southern Ukraine, speculated that a Ukrainian unmanned ground vehicle laid the fresh wire, taking over an especially dangerous task that once fell to specially trained sappers. It's possible. Many Ukrainian brigades deploy radio-controlled UGVs for the riskiest engineering tasks. 'It makes it much easier to work in all areas,' a trooper from the 93rd Mechanized Brigade explained in an official video. The wire-laying robots are simple tracked vehicles with a bed in the back for a thick coil of wire. Carefully driven to the front line by a remote operator seeing what the 'bot's own front-facing camera sees, the UGV hooks the end of the coil onto existing wire—and then unspools the rest of the coil. If the Russians spot the 'bot and destroy it, it's no big deal. 'It's better to fuck up a robot,' another 93rd Mechanized Brigade soldier mused.
Ya Libnan
13-02-2025
- Politics
- Ya Libnan
Russia is short on tanks, say military experts
Thousands of Russian tanks were destroyed by the Ukrainian forces . A U.S. official said Russia asked China for military equipment to use in its invasion of Ukraine Russia has what it needs to fight on in Ukraine for at least another year , but is struggling to replace its destroyed tanks, experts at a leading security research organization said on Wednesday. In what has become a war of attrition now nearing its three-year mark, both sides are sustaining heavy casualties as Moscow's forces slowly but steadily advance at a time when the scale and nature of any future U.S. military aid to Kyiv remains unclear under U.S. President Donald Trump. For now at least, Russia is in a stronger position than Ukraine on the battlefield despite Kyiv seriously reducing the once formidable Russian Black Sea Fleet's room for manoeuvre, experts at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said. '(With) attrition being such an important factor on land Russia has the initiative and Ukraine is fighting a defensive land battle,' said IISS senior land warfare analyst Ben Barry. 'Without any ceasefire the most likely contour of the war over the next few months is more of the same. More bloody attrition on land with very heavy casualties on both sides. If Russia wishes to prolong the war I judge it has the potential human, equipment and logistical resources to continue to do so through the rest of this year.' Trump has said he wants to end the war as fast as possible though it's not yet clear how he intends to do that. Ukraine says it needs both European and U.S. help to ensure its security. Russia says it wants full control of four Ukrainian regions it has claimed as its own, something Kyiv rejects, and for Ukraine to be kept out of NATO. Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of not being serious about peace negotiations. In its annual assessment of military capabilities, the IISS said that Moscow's total defence spending was higher than total European defence spending in purchasing-power-parity terms. It said Russia also appeared better able to maintain the size of its military than Ukraine. 'While Russia appears to be able to sustain the manning of its forces, evidence suggests that Ukraine, which generally kept its casualty figures secret, has suffered a serious drain on its personnel – with many ground units under-strength,' the report said. Ukraine's Defence Ministry this week launched a recruitment drive to attract 18-to-24-year-olds to military service for a year in an attempt to address its manpower problem. 'TANK PROBLEM' Russia, the report said, had a serious tank and armoured vehicle problem which meant it was taking heavier personnel losses on the battlefield. Moscow lost 1,400 tanks in 2024 and is struggling to make new tanks at a fast enough rate to replace the old ones despite increasing production of advanced models like the T-90M tank. 'Russia is increasingly trading quality for quantity to support its war effort,' the report said. 'The scale of its equipment losses fighting against Ukraine has meant that, to keep units equipped, it has had to draw down from its stocks of Soviet-era armor.' That has seen Moscow fall back on small numbers of vintage armoured personnel carriers built in the 1950s and tanks built in the 1960s, said the IISS, which estimates Russia has lost a total of 4,400 main battle tanks in the war so far. 'The remaining equipment in store could allow Russia to sustain the current rate of loss in the short term, but a significant number of these platforms would require deep and costly refurbishment,' the report said. Henry Boyd, the institute's senior fellow for military capability, said Russia would need to significantly expand its production of new armored vehicles or look to imports. Another problem for Russia, said Nigel Gould-Davies, a Russia specialist at the same research centre, was that the current course of the Russian economy – which he said was suffering from 'fundamental monetary imbalances' after being put on a war footing – was unsustainable 'in the longer term.' Reuters/Yahoo
