This is the second recent major conflict in which the public and analysts have questioned the utility of tanks. So much, it seems, for the death of the tank. In just a few weeks of fighting, Ukraine exploited its advantage in armor and manpower on the battlefield to take back thousands of square miles, liberating several key cities from Russian occupation. About a month ago, Ukrainian tanks-mostly Soviet-era T72s-smashed through defensive lines in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine. We wouldn’t have to wait long for an answer. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play Was the wrecked T-72 in front of us a symbol that the tank is now an obsolete weapon of war, doomed to go the way of the horse or the bayonet? But here, Ukrainian soldiers were obliterating them in the hundreds.Įighty years ago, a swarm of Soviet tanks, numbering in the thousands, had liberated these same battlefields from the Nazis in World War II. The T-72 is the AK-47 of tanks-a reliable workhorse seen in wars from Iraq to Ethiopia, from Syria to the carnage before us in Ukraine. Here is supposedly an indomitable part of the Russian war machine, demolished by plucky and nimble Ukrainian forces, armed with shoulder-mounted Western anti-tank weapons in true David-and-Goliath fashion. These scenes are now some of the war’s defining images. Its turret was undamaged and it pointed harmlessly toward our small gaggle of journalists and soldiers as we stood outside a burned-out farmhouse. The infamous “Z” sign painted on its side showed that this was a Russian tank, likely destroyed by a British-supplied NLAW missile system that Ukrainian forces in the area had been using to hamstring the once-dominant Russian Armed Forces. KHARKIV, UKRAINE-On a bright, sunny day in May, as birdsong mixed with the booms of explosions, I noticed a T-72 tank with broken treads and a burned-out, rusted chassis lying before me.

Modern russian tanks