From russia's largest landfill, 40% of mothballed old equipment was sent to war – MT

The Vagzhanovo storage facility for mothballed Soviet military equipment in Buryatia has removed 40.8% of its tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. At this base, they are mostly stored in the open air, which made it possible to count them.

Source. This was reported by The Moscow Times with reference to satellite images from Google Earth.

The area of the landfill is approximately 11 square kilometers. In addition to it, as the publication managed to find out on the basis of open sources, there are at least 20 other such storage bases for mothballed equipment in russia, but they are much smaller than Vagzhanovo.

It was found that at the outbreak of the war, 3,840 armored vehicles were stored at the site, but by November 2022, their number had dropped to 2,600. By May, approximately 2,270 armored vehicles remained at the base. Most of it was removed from storage in the fall and winter of 2022, after mobilization was announced.

According to the instructions of the russian Ministry of Defense, equipment of the fourth category, i.e. the least important, is stored in the open air. The third category involves storage under tents, the second in unheated hangars, and the first in heated and ventilated rooms.

The photos showed that almost half of the equipment was stored without a top or had visible damage.

In early July, Nona-S self-propelled mortars were spotted on the frontline, removed from storage, with an inscription on the tower "Do not touch – 2 cat[egory]". A little later, russian "military officers" wrote that the decommissioned equipment sent to the battlefield had to be repaired on the occupied territories.