Shortage of tanks: Medvedev threatens the Russian arms industry in a strange way

Once considered a beacon of hope, he is now nicknamed “Putin’s chain dog” in the West. Dmitry Medvedev stubbornly stands by his boss, Vladimir Putin, and since the start of Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, the former president has found a new role: Putin’s rhetorical speaker on the war.

Medvedev threatens and rants, often through social media. Ukraine should disappear from the map and Berlin should not be surprised if it is hit by Russian missiles. But now he is also focusing on his own arms industry.

Thursday was another day of long tables in Russia. The Kremlin distributed a video of Medvedev reading an old telegram from Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to representatives of a national armaments commission. In it, he called on a factory in the city of Chelyabinsk to produce tank parts on time: “If in a few days it turns out that you violate your duty to the fatherland, I will start beating you up like criminals,” it says. in the 1941 letter.

The threat mainly shows that the Kremlin is not satisfied with its own weapons production. In Russia, the tank panic seems to be slowly starting.

The Soviet dictator’s telegram symbolically fits the current equipment situation of the Russian army in some military areas. Putin is already sending tanks to Ukraine that were built before Stalin’s death in 1953. A dilemma for the Russian military, who will soon have to fight Western tanks with the old aircraft. What does that say about the Russian defense industry?

Russia is not yet ready to end its offensive war in Ukraine and leave Ukrainian territory. On the other hand, Ukraine has been extensively armed by the West in recent months, main battle tanks and armored personnel carriers as well as combat aircraft and quantities of ammunition are on their way to the country or have already arrived. The bloody war of attrition is likely to continue for months and the Ukrainian army looks set to launch a new offensive in the spring.

Unlike Ukraine, the Russian arms industry has to produce its own heavy weapons. After Putin’s invasion, Russia does not have many international allies and even China still refuses to support Moscow with arms shipments. The Kremlin can’t even hope for tanks from North Korea, because the North Korean military usually only has very old models. That is why Putin is dependent on the Russian defense industry.

However, it is unclear in what state tank production in Russia is currently. “The military-industrial complex has overheated,” Medvedev said in an interview published Thursday. The West is trying to cut off Russia from key components, claiming that the country has run out of artillery shells, tanks and missiles. “We’re making 1,500 tanks this year alone.”

But these are probably just Russian muscle games with which Medvedev is risking morale in the West. “Russia produces about 200 to 250 battle tanks a year, that’s about 17 a month,” military expert Gustav Gressel said in an interview with t-online in February. “These are T-90Ms, plus older tank models from the depots.” Actually, the Russian tank supply should be secured.

But there are indications of major problems. Unlike Western Europe, Russia has the advantage that the war economy already had relatively large production capacities before the conflict. But there is currently a lack of semiconductors and modern electronics that were imported from the West before the war.

The fate of the T-14 Armata shows the effects of the sanctions on the Russian war economy. Once heralded by Russian propaganda as a miracle tank, the Armata has yet to make it to the battlefield in Ukraine. A “tank for parades”, some military experts scoff.

A second clue are photos and videos of Russian trains loading tanks, which many Russians knew only from military museums. Months ago, T-64 main battle tanks caused international ridicule because the Soviet Union used them in the 1960s. But now several trains with T-54 and T-55 tanks have also been spotted – models built shortly after the end of the Second World War. The Georgian Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) had checked and analyzed the relevant photographs of the tanks.

However, it remains unclear whether these tanks will actually be sent to the front in Ukraine. The museum pieces are not suitable as a parts warehouse, but Russia could possibly station them in other parts of the country to move modern tanks. So far there are no reports from Ukraine that the old tanks have been shot down.

In any case, the reactivated tank antiques show that Russia is also fighting at the breaking point. For example, the military blog “Oryx” mentions the Russian losses of military equipment in the war in Ukraine, which are documented through images. According to this, Russia has so far lost 1,871 tanks – half of the active equipment in service. After a year of war, it also creaks in many places in Russia.

In the end, having a bunch of T-54 and T-55 tanks is probably better than having no tanks at all. But the vehicles’ armor is poor and offers little protection for the crew against more modern anti-tank weapons. The T-55 tank must also be at least two kilometers from its target in order to engage it. For example, the Leopard 2 tank can engage targets five kilometers away, and even a duel with a modernized Ukrainian Army T-72 would be a suicide mission for the Russian T-55 crew.

So the Russian military is probably not hoping that the old tanks of the Soviet era can win battles. Should they really be sent to the front line, then presumably as a defense weapon. But that alone would be a sign of weakness for the Russian defense industry.

To prevent this scenario, Dmitry Medvedev has now tightened the thumbscrews for the Russian tank manufacturers – on behalf of Vladimir Putin, of course. The Ukrainian offensive, expected in the spring, will show how good or bad the equipment level of the Russian army really is. Until then, much speculation remains.

Used sources: