There is no easy way of knowing how many Russian tanks have been destroyed in Ukraine. The open-source intelligence monitoring website Oryx said on April 28 that at least 300 Russian tanks had been destroyed, with another 279 either damaged, abandoned or captured.
However, the site only counts instances where it has visual evidence, so Russian losses could be much higher.
And these losses are not just about equipment. When Wallace, the British defense secretary, gave his estimate of 580 lost tanks to the House of Commons he also said more than 15,000 Russian military personnel had been killed during its invasion.
It's hard to know how many of those are tank crew, but what is not in doubt is that the crews are not easy to replace.
Training a tank crew could take several months at a minimum and even 12 months could be considered quick, said Aleksi Roinila, a former tank crewman in the Finnish Defense Forces.
And for Russia to replace hundreds of crew at this point in the war would be a tall order -- especially when the tanks they are expected to use are so flawed.
