It was followed by the introduction of the T-55 a few years later, and both were produced in huge quantities. Dubbed the "Beast From the East" during that East-West standoff, the tank represented a massive leap in Soviet design.
The tanks have been modernized, the sights on them have been adjusted and can be replaced, and also for each of them there is sufficient ammunition, which will be replenished in a timely manner," claimed Netkachev, suggesting they would most likely be used to hold ground, rather than attempt to gain it as part of a "main striking force." The "Beast From the East"Įntering service just after the Second World War, in 1948, the T-54 was the original Cold War tank. "We see these tanks on the railway platforms, and this indicates that crews of four people per vehicle have been trained for all of them. With Ukraine's armed forces claiming to have destroyed more than 3,600 Russian tanks since the full-scale invasion began on February 24, 2022, Netkachev stressed the sheer quantity of old Soviet tanks in Russian storage - as many as 10,000, he claimed - as a potential battlefield advantage. Yuri Netkachev, a retired lieutenant general who once commanded a tank battalion, told the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper that the T-54 and T-55 tanks were "in demand to continue the special operation, because they have a significant ammunition load." While official sources have said nothing, pro-Kremlin military analysts who feature regularly on Russia's state-run media outlets made no attempt to downplay the apparent resurrection of the Soviet military hardware.
An image published in late March 2023 by the exiled Russian Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) organization shows what the CIT says are Soviet-era T-54 and T-55 tanks rolling away from a storage base on train cars. CIT noted in its late-March report that the train transport spotted that month was the first known instance of the older T-54s and T-55s being pulled out of storage. It sparked a flurry of speculation, and while Russia's military hasn't commented on the movement of the tanks, more sophisticated but still-old Soviet T-62 tanks have already been taken from the same storage location, brought to workshops to be refurbished, and then deployed in Ukraine. Last month, an online post by the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), a Russian organization that's investigated and documented Russia's military actions in Ukraine since the first invasion in 2014, showed what it said were mothballed, Soviet-era T-54 and T-55 tanks being loaded onto trains and rolling off storage bases.
Ukraine receives Western battle tanks 01:53
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