Russian Soldiers Lament Their Aging Combat Vehicles With Aluminum Cans .

At its daily briefing on the war in Ukraine on Thursday, the State Department said Moscow’s soldiers “are likely frustrated at being forced to serve in old infantry fighting vehicles.” As Ukrainian counterattacks recaptured large swaths of territory in mid-October, Russia was losing more than 40 armored vehicles a day, “roughly equivalent to a battalion’s worth of equipment,” it said. The high rate of attrition forced Russia to resort to removing more than 100 vehicles from Belarusian stocks. “Armored units and artillery are central to Russia’s way of war; the force in Ukraine is now struggling in part because of difficulties in procuring artillery ammunition and adequate replacement armored vehicles.” Russia rarely shares data on its losses of personnel and equipment in Ukraine, but Oryx, an open-source research group, has visually confirmed that more than 7,500 Russian vehicles, including tanks, self-propelled artillery and other armored vehicles, have been lost since then. the conflict began in February.