The best ever Russian tank T-14 Armata fails on Red Square

With the recent news that the United States will be sending some M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, the German Leopard tanks' floodgates are broken. That should worry the Russians whose main battle tank, the T-90, dates back to the Soviet era. Their much-ballyhooed T-14 Armata was launched in 2015 with the promise of production of 2300. Plagued with technical problems (it famously stalled in Red Square in May 2015 and had to be towed during their Victory Day parade), it was never sold to other countries and production plans were scaled back to just 132 units in 2020. It's unclear how many have been actually made or if they will see any actual deployment in Ukraine, beyond a propaganda show.

Source: Forces.net

Russian troops in Ukraine were reluctant to accept main battle tanks in Ukraine because they were in such poor condition, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) has said.

In an intelligence update on Twitter, the MOD said Russia worked to "prepare a small number of T-14 Armata main battle tanks for the type's first operational deployment in Ukraine".

"However, in recent months, deployed Russian forces were reluctant to accept the first tranche of T-14 allocated to them because the vehicles were in such poor condition," the update said.

The MOD said it was "unclear" which aspects of the vehicle prompted the reaction from Russian troops, but officials have "publicly described problems with the T-14's engine and thermal imaging systems".

"In 2021, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu described the planned production run for 2022 as only an 'experimental-industrial' batch," the intelligence post said.

"Therefore, it is unlikely that any deployed T-14 tanks will have met the usual standards for new equipment to be deemed operational."

Ukraine does not seem worried, to put it mildly.

Perhaps they'll have more luck with the T-34, which dates back to 1944.