Russia Delivers More T-90M and T-72B3M Tanks as It Rebuilds Combat Power in Ukraine.

Russia’s ability to keep replacing tanks is becoming a critical measure of how long Moscow can sustain armored warfare as Soviet-era reserves are steadily depleted by combat in Ukraine. Uralvagonzavod’s September 12, 2026 delivery of T-90M Proryv and T-72B3M tanks highlights whether Russian industry can move beyond refurbishing stored vehicles and generate enough modern armor to offset continued losses.

That shift matters directly for Ukraine and NATO because Russia’s future tank strength will depend increasingly on production capacity rather than inherited Cold War stockpiles. If Moscow can sustain output of upgraded and newly built vehicles, it could preserve significant armored combat power even as older reserves shrink.

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T-90M Proryv main battle tanks undergo testing at a Russian production facility, highlighting Uralvagonzavod’s role in sustaining tank output, integrating battlefield-driven upgrades, and replacing armored losses from the war in Ukraine. (Picture source: Russia press agency TASS video footage)

Uralvagonzavod, part of Russia’s Rostec state corporation, said the new T-90M and T-72B3M tanks were delivered to the Russian Army ahead of Tanker’s Day with improved all-aspect protection developed from combat experience. According to the company, production volumes are increasing while engineers continue modifying the vehicles, particularly against unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) threats, linking Russia’s tank output directly to lessons learned from first-person-view (FPV) drone-intensive warfare in Ukraine.

The latest delivery matters less for the undisclosed number of tanks in the batch than for what it reveals about the structure of Russia’s armored regeneration effort. Moscow has absorbed thousands of tank losses since February 2022, but it has compensated through several parallel channels: manufacturing T-90Ms, modernizing T-72s, rebuilding T-80s, withdrawing Soviet tanks from storage and repairing combat-damaged vehicles. Assessments by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) indicate that Russia has relied heavily on its enormous inherited Soviet inventory to compensate for attrition, allowing the military to regenerate armored formations at a rate that new tank construction alone could not have supported.

That dependence cannot continue indefinitely. Tanks left in long-term storage become progressively harder and more expensive to restore as the most serviceable vehicles are removed first, while some deteriorated hulls may ultimately serve only as sources of spare parts. This is why the T-90M is becoming strategically more significant than individual deliveries suggest: unlike the refurbishment of a Soviet-built T-72 hull, continued T-90M construction demonstrates Russia’s ability to generate additional armored combat power after the easiest reserve stocks have been consumed.

Available open-source estimates indicate that Uralvagonzavod has substantially expanded T-90M manufacturing compared with pre-war levels, although Russian production figures remain opaque and estimates vary significantly. The critical industrial indicator is therefore not a single annual figure but the sustained appearance of newly manufactured T-90Ms alongside ongoing T-72 and T-80 modernization programs. If Russia can continue increasing genuine new-build output while maintaining refurbishment lines, its tank force will become progressively less dependent on the Soviet inheritance that has underwritten much of its wartime replacement capacity.

The T-90M Proryv and T-72B3M serve complementary roles within this production model. The T-90M is Russia’s most advanced main battle tank currently manufactured in significant numbers, combining a 125 mm smoothbore gun with upgraded fire control, improved armor, modernized electronics, and additional protection introduced during the war in Ukraine. The T-72B3M instead exploits Russia’s large inventory of T-72-family tanks, rebuilding existing vehicles with improved sights, mobility, explosive reactive armor, and other modifications. Modernizing T-72s lets the Russian Army regenerate numerical mass faster and at lower industrial cost, while increasing T-90M production offers a longer-term route to replacing the Soviet-built hulls on which much of Russia’s wartime regeneration has depended.

Tanks remain important in the war in Ukraine despite the extraordinary proliferation of drones and precision weapons. Russian and Ukrainian forces continue using main battle tanks for protected direct-fire support, attacks against fortified positions, suppression of infantry positions and engagement of targets that would otherwise require artillery or anti-tank weapons. Their employment has nevertheless changed considerably: minefields, persistent aerial surveillance, artillery, anti-tank guided missiles and FPV drones make unsupported armored assaults extremely costly, forcing tanks to operate more closely with infantry, engineers, reconnaissance UAVs and electronic warfare (EW) units. The tank has therefore not disappeared from the battlefield, but its effectiveness increasingly depends on integration with other combat capabilities.

FPV drones have consequently become a major driver of Russian tank protection. Uralvagonzavod said the latest T-90M and T-72B3M vehicles received improved all-round protection, while the Russian military representative quoted by the company specifically identified additional protection against UAVs as a development priority. Russian tanks deployed in Ukraine have increasingly appeared with extensive turret-roof structures, additional protection around vulnerable areas, and electronic countermeasure equipment intended to reduce their exposure to FPV attacks, showing how solutions initially developed or improvised on the battlefield are progressively influencing factory configurations.

This ability to turn frontline experience into industrial modifications is a key component of Russia’s wartime production capability. FPV drones can maneuver toward comparatively vulnerable upper, rear, and engine-compartment areas rather than attempting to penetrate the thickest frontal armor, forcing Russian engineers to reconsider protection around the entire vehicle. Additional armor and EW systems cannot make a tank immune to drone attack, but they can complicate targeting, improve crew survivability, and increase the probability that a damaged vehicle can be recovered instead of becoming a permanent battlefield loss. Uralvagonzavod’s emphasis on continuous modifications suggests Russia is attempting to institutionalize this feedback loop between tank crews, engineers, and production facilities.

Repairability is another reason Russian tank losses do not translate directly into an equivalent reduction in available combat strength. The T-72 and T-90 families share substantial technical heritage, while Russia possesses decades of maintenance experience, specialized repair facilities and established component supply chains for these vehicles. Recovering a damaged tank and replacing its engine, transmission, optics, armor modules or other components can require substantially fewer resources than manufacturing a completely new main battle tank. In an attritional conflict, industrial repair capacity therefore acts as a production multiplier because the same tank can be damaged, recovered, repaired, and returned to service more than once.

The transition from Soviet reserves toward new production nevertheless represents a major pressure point for the Russian defense industry. Russia entered the conflict with thousands of tanks in storage, but the headline inventory never represented thousands of equally serviceable vehicles. Years of withdrawals mean that remaining stocks increasingly include tanks requiring deeper refurbishment, while continued combat losses place simultaneous demands on factories for modernization, repairs and new construction. Western sanctions add pressure by restricting access to certain electronics, machine tools and specialized industrial components, although repeated Russian deliveries demonstrate that these measures have not stopped armored-vehicle production.

For Ukraine, sustained Russian tank production changes the mathematics of attrition. Destroying Russian tanks at the front is not enough if Moscow can offset a significant share of those losses through new T-90M production, T-72B3M modernization, and recovery and repair. Ukrainian forces must therefore impose permanent losses faster than Russia can regenerate vehicles, while improved anti-drone protection could increase the number of FPV strikes or other weapons needed to disable a tank beyond economical repair.

For NATO, the implications extend beyond the current conflict. If Uralvagonzavod can progressively replace declining Soviet stocks with sustained new T-90M production, Russia could emerge from the Ukraine war with a defense industry configured to regenerate armored formations at a pace that presents a longer-term challenge to European force planning. The issue is not simply how many tanks Russia possesses today, but whether wartime investment has created enough manufacturing, modernization, and repair capacity to rebuild heavy forces after major losses while continuing to equip active units.

The September 12, 2026, T-90M and T-72B3M delivery should therefore be viewed as another indicator of Russian industrial endurance rather than simply a routine shipment of tanks. Moscow has so far preserved significant armored combat power by combining Soviet reserves, T-72B3M modernization, battlefield repair, FPV-driven upgrades, and expanding T-90M production despite heavy Ukrainian war tank losses and Western sanctions. The decisive longer-term question is whether Russia's tank production can increase fast enough to compensate for the shrinking pool of recoverable Soviet vehicles; if it can, the Russian defense industry could provide the Russian Army with a sustainable source of armored mass well beyond the present conflict.

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Written by Alain Servaes – Chief Editor, Army Recognition Group
Alain Servaes is a former infantry non-commissioned officer and the founder of Army Recognition. With over 20 years in defense journalism, he provides expert analysis on military equipment, NATO operations, and the global defense industry.