The 22nd Central Tank Reserve Base in the town of Buy in the Kostroma Region received new T-90M tanks, BTR-82A armored personnel carriers and BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles between autumn 2025 and October 2026, according to the OSINT analysis by Radio Liberty journalist Mark Krutov and the analysts Jonpy and Covert Cabal, published by the outlet Important Stories. The study identifies the vehicles as factory-new rather than restored equipment. The base lies roughly 500 km from the borders of Estonia and Latvia.
In Karelia, new Malva and Giatsint-K self-propelled artillery systems have been arriving at the 374th Mobilization Deployment Support Center since 2025. The facility is about 185 km from the Finnish border.
At the 349th Central Storage Base in Topchikha in the Altai Region, up to 78 tanks and more than a hundred infantry fighting vehicles appeared in the summer. Jonpy suggests these are restored T-72B3M tanks of the 2016 model and BMP-2 vehicles. Several hundred more units may have been delivered there in recent weeks, Radio Liberty reported; the image quality does not allow the models to be identified. The analysts also noted that the 6018th base was replenished with BMP-3 and BMD-4 vehicles.
The journalists stress that the findings concern the replenishment of storage bases, not equipment already handed to active units and ready for transfer.
According to the Oryx project, which counts visually confirmed losses, by the start of 2025 the Russian army had lost more than 20,000 pieces of military equipment and weapons, including about 11,600 tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers. At the end of 2024, a group of independent researchers studying satellite images of Russian storage bases estimated the remaining stocks of main equipment types at 41-52% of pre-war levels.
Krutov suggests the accumulated vehicles could be useful to Russia in a possible confrontation with NATO, whose armies are so far less prepared than Ukraine's for a large-scale war involving drones. Moscow denies plans to attack alliance countries.
In June 2026, journalists from DR, NRK, SVT and Delfi also reported that Russia continues to build and modernize military facilities near the borders of NATO countries. At the end of September, Danish intelligence warned of a "low but growing" risk of a limited Russian attack on a NATO country in the coming months. In August, US intelligence suggested Russia might attempt a limited attack on one of the alliance's countries to test the bloc's readiness to defend itself.