CNN: Russia Sending Museum Exhibits To War

Using weapons of this type is an act of desperation.

Russia is moving old Soviet T-55 tanks to the front line in Ukraine, but they may still be effective. This was reported by RBC-Ukraine, citing CNN.

Russia is sending T-55 model tanks, first adopted by the Red Army of the Soviet Union in 1948, to the war against Ukraine. They are so old they can be found in museums.

Historian John Delaney, senior curator at the Imperial War Museum in Duxford, explained that this was the first main battle tank used by the Soviet Union during the Cold War era.

"Up to that point there had been three very distinct types of tanks, light, medium and heavy, fulfilling different roles on the battlefield. From the mid-50s onwards, there was this concept that tried to create a tank that could do everything bit by bit, and that became known as the main battle tank," he said.

Russia started to withdraw the T-55s from service in the 1980s. However, they were mothballed rather than disposed of. Delaney believes a significant number of them are standing in sheds, waiting to be reconfigured.

Russia is Moving T-55 Tanks to the Front

Satellite images taken on April 21-22 show that Russia was removing dozens of tanks from a depot at the Arsenyev base in the country's Far East. They show that some of the tanks stored at the base are T-55s. Western officials told CNN in April that they had spotted the old tank near the front lines.

The intelligence website of Oryx claims to have visual evidence that Russia has lost more than 1,900 tanks since the invasion of Ukraine began, almost two-thirds of the original stockpile of about 3,000.

Robert Lee, a former US Marine and senior fellow at the American Institute for Foreign Policy Research, said Russia has lost a lot of hardware and new ones are hard to produce.

"They are producing some new tanks, they are still producing T-90s, but they need more equipment than they can make, so they are relying on all the older tanks to make up for it," he said.

In addition, Trevor Taylor, director of the Defence, Industry and Society Programme at the Royal United Services Institute, said Western sanctions are also slowing down Russian arms production.

Lee believes the use of the T-55s will be limited: "Some of these systems are likely to be used in the rear first. Hence, it's not necessarily tanks going forward, it could be a long-range type of fire."

That said, Delaney believes the T-55s could prove useful.

"One of the things you can obviously use this (tank - ed.) for, if you're trying to avoid fighting between tanks and tanks, is to bury them in defensive positions, put the tank in a hole so you can only see the turret, then they can be used to protect the front line from a counterattack," he said.

He added that this use of tanks for an aggressor country can be effective for static defensive positions.

The Russians have to rely on a conscript army that is less trained than their enemy's army. And T-55 tanks are easy to use for poorly trained soldiers.

"I think that when faced with Western weapons, the Russians should expect very high casualties if they plan to advance using the T-55 system. To use a weapon of this type is an act of desperation," Taylor said.

Delaney added that the T-55 will lose every time in tank battles against a Leopard or Challenger.