Several badly damaged tanks have been seen travelling by rail towards Uralvagonzavod in Nizhny Tagil, a journey that illustrates the competing demands now facing Russia’s main tank factory. Footage circulating on Russian social media, along with recent photographs, showed several damaged T-90M main battle tanks being taken to the plant for repair.
Uralvagonzavod is Russia’s main tank manufacturer and its only plant building new T-90M tanks. It has now also begun major repairs on T-90Ms wrecked in Ukraine, work that had traditionally been assigned to military armoured repair plants rather than the manufacturer itself.
The change follows the collapse of Russia’s network of military armoured repair plants, known as BTRZ, under the pressure of the war. Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine created exceptional demand for replacement tanks, and Uralvagonzavod has had to absorb repair work beyond its central manufacturing role.
The factory is therefore carrying out three tasks at once: producing tanks, repairing damaged vehicles recovered from the front and overhauling Soviet-era tanks held in storage. Each heavily damaged vehicle sent through the same system can consume labour, workshop space, components and time that could otherwise go to new production.
Andrei Tarasenko, an armour analyst who discusses such issues on his Btvt.info Telegram channel, has said the collapse of the BTRZ network forced Uralvagonzavod to perform major repairs. He has also said rebuilding a tank at a production plant costs about as much as building a new one.
The plant has demonstrated that it can return severely damaged vehicles to service. In 2024, Uralvagonzavod said it had restored a T-90M in four weeks after the tank had been struck by 26 drones.
The damage reflects the conditions facing tanks on the battlefield. First-person view drones and other unmanned systems have made upper surfaces, rear sections and engine compartments especially vulnerable. Tanks disabled in contested grey zones are often hit repeatedly before Russian recovery crews can reach them, while vehicles damaged farther behind the front are easier to evacuate to repair facilities.
Questions also surround what counts as a newly built tank. Some T-90Ms leaving Uralvagonzavod have used refurbished hulls from older T-90A tanks rather than newly built hulls. Jakub Janovsky, lead analyst at the Oryx open-source project, which documents equipment losses through photo and video evidence, has warned that repaired tanks receiving upgrades could blur production figures. Some organisations could count such factory repairs and upgrades as ‘new production’.
In September, Uralvagonzavod delivered another batch of T-90M and modernised T-72B3M tanks to the Russian Army. Pro-Moscow military bloggers have nevertheless lamented that the company has become largely a repair operation for tanks damaged in the war or an upgrade line for mothballed Soviet-era armour.
The pressure comes as Russia’s available reserve of armour has diminished. Before the outbreak of full-scale hostilities in February 2022, Russia had by several estimates over 20,000 vehicles inherited from the Soviet Union. The most recent available satellite imagery indicates that the Russian Armed Forces retain only 2,088 tanks in storage across nine identified facilities.
Analysts link the strain on Russia’s tank manufacturing industry to Western sanctions and labour shortages. The available figures do not show how much of Uralvagonzavod’s capacity is now devoted to repair work, how many T-90Ms it builds, or how many it restores. The factory’s ability to balance those demands will shape Russia’s capacity to replace armoured losses in Ukraine.
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