Three Countries Team Up To Send A Whole Brigade Of T-72s To Ukraine

The United States, The Netherlands and the Czech Republic are teaming up to deliver to Ukraine 90 upgraded T-72B tanks.

It’s a complex arrangement involving American and Dutch money and Czech tanks. The end result, however, should be enough fresh T-72s for a whole Ukrainian army brigade. “The introduction of these 90 technically advanced, newly refurbished T-72B tanks will further enhance Ukraine’s proficient armored warfare capabilities,” the three countries said in a joint statement.

The U.S.-Dutch-Czech consortium announced the $90-million deal on Friday “in response to Russia’s continued aggression against Ukraine, and in support of the valiant efforts of the Ukrainian armed forces to defend their sovereign territory.”

The 1980s-vintage tanks will come from the inventory of the Czech defense industry, according to the three governments. They aren’t Czech army tanks, the defense ministry in Prague stressed. The Czech army uses upgraded versions of the T-72M, which is the downgraded version of the basic Soviet-era T-72A.

The enhanced T-72Bs the Americans and Dutch are paying for are T-72As with a better fire-control system, thicker armor, a new stabilization system for the 125-millimeter main gun and an uprated, 840-horsepower engine.

In 1985, the 42-ton, three-crew T-72B was state-of-the-art. In 2022, it’s still one of the better tanks Ukraine has access to—especially with the improved optics Czech technicians are set to install. The Ukrainian armed forces began Russia’s wider war on Ukraine with around 2,500 tanks in active service or storage, around a third of which were various models of T-72.

Among the roughly 350 tanks the Ukrainians have lost in eight months of hard fighting are around 50 T-72s, including 20 or so T-72Bs.

The tanks Kyiv has received from its foreign allies, in order to make good these losses, generally have been less sophisticated than the tanks it already had. The donations have included at least 270 T-72Ms—from Poland, mostly—as well as 28 even older M-55Ss from Slovenia.

The 90 T-72Bs the Americans, Dutch and Czechs are providing should raise the overall quality of the armor the Ukrainians are acquiring from foreign sources.

Non-Russian foreign sources, that is. Russia is by far Ukraine’s biggest tank donor. The Ukrainians have captured nearly 500 T-62, T-72, T-80 and T-90 tanks that Russian crews have abandoned on the battlefield.

What the Ukrainians plan to do with their fresh T-72Bs is an open question.

Broadly, there are three options. The ex-Czech T-72Bs could replace the T-72Bs that existing Ukrainian brigades have written off since the war widened back in February. Alternatively, the Ukrainian army could form three new 30-tank battalions and assign them to some of Ukraine’s current light or medium brigades, adding protection and firepower to those units.

The third option is for the Ukrainian army to stand up a new tank brigade—something the service so far has declined to do despite the central role its five or six tank brigades have played in Kyiv’s war plans.

The ex-Czech T-72Bs are scheduled to begin arriving in Ukraine next month.