Russia's 1295th storage base

Russia's far eastern tank storage base was one of the first to be emptied

Here is a satellite photo of Russia’s 1295th storage base near Arsenjaw from Google Earth during October 2020. Things are a bit blurry if you zoom in, but we can see a large number of vehicles stored there, with online counters estimating 286 visible tanks, 286 visible BMP infantry fighting vehicles and 113 other armoured vehicles..

There are also garages which could have stored hundreds more armoured vehicles, and the exact amount in those garages is a huge uncertainty in how many resources russia has left. Zooming in, we can see that the tanks outside the sheds appear to be in some kind of sheets.

These are actually dry-air storage bags, and further zoom reveals tubes running left-to-right. These are part of the special storage setup for Russia’s reserve of tanks that were almost ready-to-go. This is what the 1295th looked like in June 2023.

It has been completely emptied of those best-condition vehicles and many of those left outside, and newer imagery shows even the older stuff is being removed. Here are the data.

Russia appears to have consistently removed the best condition vehicles first, visibly emptying the dry-air storages across all their bases. Since those stored in garages were also likely in good condition, those were probably removed very quickly and are likely now empty of working tanks. The 1295th does have some WW2-era vehicles that it pulls out for propaganda parades, but the 1295th base is likely effectively exhausted of usable vehicles. The remaining tanks appear to be ancient T-55s, and the BMPs the oldest BMP-1 type, left outside and packed closely for years. Such close packing together makes it almost impossible for full maintenace access, perhaps they will now only be good for spare parts.