Russia said on Saturday it had captured the devastated city of Bakhmut, after the longest and bloodiest battle of its wide-ranging invasion, although Ukraine denies that Moscow’s forces are in full control of the city. Ukrainian President Zelensky likened the ruins of the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut to the destruction of Hiroshima in World War II as he attended the Group of Seven summit in the Japanese city on Sunday.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova “scoffed” at Zelensky’s comparison, saying the United States bombed Hiroshima and provided military support to Ukraine.
Russia uses ‘ancient’ tanks in Ukraine
In late March, photos of trains full of tanks discovered on Russian social media strongly suggested that Russia had begun activating some of the thousands of old T-54B tanks in deep storage for use in fighting in Ukraine due to massive losses of more modern T-72, T-80 and T-90 tanks.
The T-54 entered production in the late 1940s and has a crew of four, unlike Russia’s modern three-man tanks.
Now, according to social media posts by Andrei Tarasenko, owner of the Russian tank-themed website btvt.info, Russian military sources say that T-54s are indeed being deployed in combat, supposedly to be used not so much as tanks, but as armored artillery vehicles firing shells at distant targets.
Later posts on the same blog indicate that Russia originally intended to use slightly less outdated T-62M tanks in the artillery role, but that these ended up being assigned to front-line units in assault roles.
Armoured Battle Tanks as Artillery: Good or Bad Idea?
The repurposing of tanks to serve as indirect fire artillery, firing projectiles at greater distances, has a long history. And, no doubt, Russia now wants to deploy more artillery in Ukraine, even though large-scale indirect fire is not an ideal use of the main tank.
That said, the T-54’s 100mm D10T gun (introduced in WWII as a tank destroyer), is not as valuable as the modern 125mm 2A46 guns used on modern Russian tanks.
And the D-10T-compatible 100mm round magazines probably haven’t been used as extensively as the standard Russian 122 and 152mm artillery shells. So the supply of high-explosive 100mm shells—though less effective—can at least be easy to source.
It is also worth noting that both Russian and Ukrainian tanks occasionally perform indirect fire attacks with unusual accuracy against individual enemy vehicles, using drone spotters to correct their fire.
Despite being used as artillery, it seems likely that Russian T-54s will, at some point, be called upon to provide direct fire support perhaps to assist Russian units.
