The Ukrainian Army Captured Dozens Of The Russian Army’s Old T-62 Tanks—And Is Now Sending Them Back Into Battle

After losing a thousand of its best T-80 and T-72 tanks in Ukraine, the Kremlin early this summer began pulling 50-year-old T-62s out of long-term storage and sending them to the front—especially in the south.

Five months later in September, Ukrainian brigades launched counteroffensives in the east and south. The southern brigades started scooping up old T-62s by the dozen. And now, as was inevitable, those T-62s are beginning to appear on the front line again—on the Ukrainian side.

The first video of an ex-Russian T-62 in distinctive Ukrainian camouflage appeared online last week.

It’s not yet clear where Ukraine has deployed its new-old T-62s or which unit is using them. But it’s a safe bet the other 42 or so newly Ukrainian T-62s lurk nearby. Armies after all tend to organize their tanks in battalions of around three dozen vehicles.

The T-62 isn’t the oldest tank model in the Ukraine theater. That honorific belongs to the 1950s-vintage, but heavily upgraded, M-55S that Slovenia has pledged to Ukraine.

But technologically, the T-62 is at least a generation behind Russia’s main tank, the T-72—and somewhat farther behind Ukraine’s own T-64. That doesn’t make the T-62 useless. It does make it likely Ukrainian forces will assign the T-62s to second-line roles—fortifying garrison towns, for example.

That there are any T-62s on the Ukraine battlefield is testimony to the scale of the mechanized warfare in the country. The Russians went to war with thousands of T-80s and T-72s, and after nine months of fighting has lost at least 1,500 of them, including at least 500 that the Ukrainians have captured.

Ukraine’s own tank corps, 900 T-64s and T-72s strong back in February, also has suffered heavy losses: around 375 total write-offs, of which 130 or so tanks were captured by the Russians.

The difference between Russian and Ukrainian tank attrition is that Ukraine has captured from Russia more modern tanks than it has lost to Russia, while Russia has had to dip into its warehouses and open-air tank parks in order to make good its own losses.

There weren’t enough intact T-80s and T-72s in storage to replace the T-80s and T-72s Russia had lost, but there were lots of T-62s. The Kremlin ordered the 103rd Armored Plant in Chita, in southern Siberia, to recondition 80o T-62s through 2025.

The old tanks began arriving at the front this summer, where they stiffened Russian battalions trying—and ultimately failing—to hold onto Kherson Oblast in southern Ukraine. There’s no evidence the T-62s played any meaningful role in the fighting. There’s ample evidence their four-man crews abandoned the tanks at the first opportunity.

Crews bailing out undamaged tanks says more about the failure of Russian battlefield leadership than it says about the tanks themselves. The well-led Ukrainians arguably are in a better position to use the T-62s than the Russians ever were.

That said, there is a potential problem with Ukraine’s new T-62 force. All other Ukrainian tanks beside the M-55Ss fire 125-millimeter shells. The M-55S has a 105-millimeter main gun firing NATO-standard rounds that are in widespread use in Ukraine. The T-62’s own main gun is 115 millimeters in diameter.

The Ukrainian army previously operated ex-Soviet T-62s back in the 1990s, but it’s unclear whether the service still has big stocks of 115-millimeter ammunition—or convenient sources for replenishing those stocks.

The potential ammo shortage, more than the sophistication—or lack thereof—of the T-62s could be the main reason the Ukrainian army deploys its ex-Russian T-62s, but doesn’t deploy them anywhere they might see intensive fighting.

This story has been corrected. A previous version listed the wrong caliber for the M-55S’s main gun.