Russia ended 2025 with losses of more than 13,800 armored vehicles in Ukraine

The Russian invasion of Ukraine continues to turn into a huge disaster for the invading army, both in terms of soldiers and military equipment.

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The independent website oryxspioenkop.com, which has been graphically documenting the losses of both sides since the start of the large-scale Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, has published a summary of Russian material losses as of January 1 2026, both in relation to the beginning of the war and in the last month.

The most striking losses are those of tanks: 4,308 since the beginning of the invasion, 3,222 of them destroyed, 158 damaged, and 400 abandoned, a common practice in many cases due to a lack of fuel or spare parts. So far, the Ukrainian Army has managed to capture 539 Russian tanks, an excellent means of acquiring tanks, to which must be added the more than 700 vehicles of this type donated to Ukraine by other countries.

However, the largest category of Russian losses is armored vehicles and infantry fighting vehicles: 8,735 in total. Russia's inability to replace these colossal losses has long been evident on the battlefield, with Russian soldiers forced to use cars, motorcycles, and even horses to get around due to a lack of armored vehicles.

Things don't seem to be going much better for Russia in the air. As of January 1, the Russians had already lost 174 airplanes, 166 helicopters, and 790 unmanned aerial vehicles (including combat and reconnaissance drones). The hardest-hit aircraft is the Sukhoi Su-25 attack aircraft, with 41 lost, followed by the Sukhoi Su-34 attack aircraft, with 40 lost.

However, the most painful air losses for Russia are two Beriev A-50 "Mainstay" aircraft, extremely expensive and scarce early warning and airborne control planes, whose downing not only entails the loss of valuable material and highly specialized personnel, but also the inability to offer safe airspace to Russian aircraft.

Let's review the Russian figures since the beginning of the invasion in detail (total losses are shown first, and those recorded between December 1, 2025 and January 1, 2026 are shown in parentheses):

• Tanks: 4,308 (+58).
• Infantry Fighting Vehicles: 8,735 (+96).
• Armored Personnel Carriers: 722 (+18).
• Mine-Resistant Armored Personnel Carriers (MRAPs): 62 (+0).
• Infantry Mobility Vehicles: 415 (+3).
• Command and Communications Vehicles: 312 (+1).
• Engineering and Equipment Vehicles: 706 (+7).
• Unmanned Ground Vehicles: 34 (+11).
• Artillery Support Vehicles: 172 (+0).
• Self-Propelled Artillery: 993 (+2).
• Towed Artillery: 545 (+4).
• Multiple Rocket Launchers: 545 (+8).
• Anti-Aircraft Artillery: 66 (+0).
• Self-propelled anti-aircraft artillery pieces: 28 (+1).
• Surface-to-air missile systems (SAMs): 368 (+9).
• Mobile radars: 112 (+0).
• Trucks, all-terrain vehicles, and other vehicles: 4,423 (+61).
• Airplanes: 174 (+4).
• Helicopters: 166 (+0).
• Unmanned combat aerial vehicles: 21 (+1).
• Unmanned reconnaissance aerial vehicles: 769 (+8).
• Naval units: 29 (+1).
• TOTAL: 23,844.
• Total armored vehicles: 13,827.

In 2022, some claimed that Russia would conquer Ukraine in a matter of weeks, radically underestimating the Ukrainians' capacity to resist and believing that many would surrender without a fight. Four years later, the defenders of Ukraine continue to inflict heavy losses on the Russians, who continue to expend enormous numbers of soldiers and equipment to achieve increasingly insignificant objectives. All this while the Russian population increasingly suffers the effects of international sanctions, paying the price for the ambitions of dictator Vladimir Putin.

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Main photo: A Russian T-73B3 tank destroyed in Ukraine in May 2023.