Because tanks are expensive and sending prisoners with AK-47 to storm enemy trenches is much cheaper.

So you're saying they've got this enormous fleet of tanks that they've yet to deploy but which could turn the tide of the war ... and they're just sitting on them? I don't buy it.

Its a classic russian strategy for coping. They will state that they are choosing to loose and that they could win if they wanted. It's unclear what exactly this helps, other than making them seem incompetent and willing to let people die when it could have been avoided.

> It's unclear what exactly this helps, other than making them seem incompetent and willing to let people die when it could have been avoided.

How exactly is the massive deployment of mobile artillery supposed to result in less deaths?

In any case, the end of the war would obviously not be the end of the world. Isn't the whole point of the aid for Ukraine that it is supposed to contain Russia and deplete its military and economic capabilities?

The point of the aid is to assist Ukraine in its defence. Whether Putin chooses to continue to exhaust Russian military stockpiles and crater the Russian economy in pursuit of a war that looks increasingly unwinnable is his choice.

> Whether Putin chooses to continue to exhaust Russian military stockpiles and crater the Russian economy in pursuit of a war that looks increasingly unwinnable is his choice.

So yeah, my point to parent asking why Russia might not be throwing everything at once.

I just wrote that Russia has lot of tanks so it has reserves to replace lost ones; I didn't write that using them all at once can give any advantage.

Storming the trenches implies they're actually there to fight and win.

In most cases they're there to get shot at enough while drones watch and tag enemy positions for artillery strikes.

In peer- or near-peer conflicts arty accounts for a high, often monumentally high, number of casualties -- easily 75% or more. The prisoners aren't expected to win, that would require lots of training, trust, gear, and planning; they're expected to draw fire, and the VDV or main-line regulars will clean up the rest.

Because they're old rust-buckets that are only good as supplies of replacement parts for the tanks that still work.

Have you seen that smoking aircraft carrier? Russian military equipment is often in a terrible state.

Of course they also have this brand new super tank, the T-14 Armata. No idea why they're not fielding that one, but I suspect it doesn't work.

Yep I don’t believe the described enormous, modern tank fleet exists. T-14 exists and probably does work fine, it just doesn’t exist in sufficient numbers to matter.

Tank boneyards. Thousands of tanks but many in disrepair; the US has similar.

Corruption and mixed priorities meant that most of the storage depots didn't see regular maintenance done, so vehicles that should have been "mostly workable" were basically rust-buckets. However estimates put the stockpiles at like 8000 T-72s, 10000 BMPs, etc., and even if only 1/3 of them are viable that still represents thousands of vehicles.

Logistics are another problem though. Even if only 1/3 are viable you have to ship repairs, replacement parts, and the entire vehicle across huge distances and that takes a lot of time. If there is a T-55 in a depo that's closer and it doesn't need parts -- great, get that to the front now; it'll do rear-line duty or something.

"High Quality" is also relative -- virtually all of NATO's, and Russia's, tanks are upgraded late-Cold-War models, but there is a non-trivial difference in the late-Soviet vs. post-Soviet era developments. Getting an old T-72 working might be easy enough, but getting that upgraded to the T-72B3M edition is a different story.

This was my understanding too, I was curious whether this user was confused or being dishonest.