Russia no longer has economic means to wage offensive warfare

The vast Uralvagonzavod tank factory in Western Siberia is running out of workers. Plans to add a second production line for T-90 battle tanks have stalled.

“It’s now impossible: there is an acute shortage of personnel at the plant. A master used to need special training, but now they take anyone with any experience in production,” said one employee, speaking to the regional Sverdlovsk newspaper, according to The Telegraph.

The sprawling complex served as Stalin’s rear fortress in the Second World War. It built the Soviet Union’s T-34 tanks, safely beyond the reach of the Nazis.

Now under the state-conglomerate Rostec – run by ex-KGB general Sergey Chemezov –, it may struggle to save the Russian army a second time.

Rostec is scouring the country, offering bumper wages and housing vouchers, especially for design engineers. But the pool of skills and manpower has dried up.

Some 700,000 Russians have left the country since the war began a year ago, mostly young men and mostly the best-educated. The military meat grinder is chewing up 800 soldiers a day, according to British intelligence. The more that Vladimir Putin mobilises those who remain, the less he has for his war industries.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies thinks Russia has already lost 2,000-2,300 tanks in Ukraine, wasting half of its pre-war stock of T-72s and T-80s. “They're producing and reactivating nowhere near enough to compensate for those loss rates,” it said.

Clearly, Uralvagonzavod cannot change this equation. Russia is for now drawing down its final reserve of Soviet relics, but these lack parts and are sitting ducks for Ukrainian drones.