Russia’s Ancient T-62 Tanks Are On The Move In Ukraine

After losing more than 700 of its best T-72, T-80 and T-90 tanks in Ukraine in the first three months of fighting, the Russian army got pretty desperate for functional armored vehicles.

So desperate that, in May, the army pulled from long-term storage what might be at least a battalion’s worth of 60-year-old T-62 tanks—perhaps 50 in all. Two weeks later, some of the museum-ready T-62s have been spotted rolling toward the front line outside Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine.

“Their presence on the battlefield highlights Russia’s shortage of modern, combat-ready equipment,” the U.K. Defense Ministry stated, referring to the T-62s.

The Russian army went into the current, wider war in Ukraine with around 2,800 modern tanks on its official table of equipment. But it’s not clear all of those tanks were in good repair or even possessed all their electronics and optics, which have resale value and tend to attract thieves.

Thus the 700 tanks the Russians have lost could represent a third of their pre-war inventory of battle-ready armor. Hence those T-62s.

The problem is, the T-62 in essence is a stretched, up-gunned version of the older T-55, which itself was the Soviet Union’s first major post-World War II tank. Newer T-72s began replacing the T-62s in Soviet—later, Russian—service way back in the 1970s.

For good reason. The T-62 is very vulnerable to modern tanks, anti-tank missiles and drones.

The photos of T-62s on the road south of Mykolaiv should settle some initial speculation that the Russians never intended to send the old tanks into possible direct combat with better-equipped Ukrainian formations.

The thinking, among these skeptics, was that Russian commanders would hold back the 41-ton T-62s, staging them with their four-person crews in Russian-held towns and cities strictly for defensive purposes. Like moveable bunkers.

Instead, the Russians are deploying the old tanks with their 115-millimeter guns toward the southern battlefront, where Ukrainian battalions in recent weeks have crossed the Inhulets Rivers and established a lodgment 40 miles north of Russian-occupied Kherson.

Crews even have welded onto the T-62s cage-like apparatuses that some operators seem to believe will protect the vehicles from top-down strikes by anti-tank guided missiles such as Ukraine’s homemade Stugna-P and the American-made Javelin.

The impulse to add protection makes sense. The old tanks arrived in southern Ukraine without the explosive reactive armor that protects newer Russian and Ukrainian vehicles. “The T-62s will almost certainly be particularly vulnerable to anti-tank weapons,” the U.K. Defense Ministry explained. But there’s no evidence a welded cage in fact offers any meaningful protection.

The cages meanwhile have plenty of downsides. They add weight, obstruct a tank commander’s view, block turret-mounted machine guns and make a tank taller, and thus easier to spot on the battlefield.

The cages only increase the burden on crews and maintainers that the aging T-62s impose even in a clean, unmodified state. The Russian army stores most of its roughly 10,000 surplus tanks, including potentially thousands of T-62s, in vast outdoor vehicle parks, where the tanks are exposed to wet winters.

Rust long ago rendered most of the stored tanks useless. The T-62s ironically may have endured the brutal conditions better than newer models have done, owing to the T-62’s lack of sophisticated and delicate optics and electronics.

But rubber seals are rubber seals—and nothing made of rubber likes to sit out in the open for several decades. Each of the T-62s the Russians have deployed to Ukraine likely is running on fragile automotive systems that could break down after minimal stress. Overheating is another major risk.

It should come as no surprise that a photo already is circulating on social media depicting a broken-down T-62 on a roadside somewhere in southern Ukraine.

There’s no evidence yet that the T-62s have fought their first battle in Ukraine. But their location puts them in close vicinity to Ukrainian battalions advancing toward Kherson in reasonably modern T-72 and T-64 tanks.

It’s probably just a matter of time before analysts start adding T-62s to the long list of tanks the Russian army has lost in Ukraine.