Russia shows the West it’s a comrade in arms debacles

Igor Sutyagin, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said that the Armata T-14 main battle tank had been scheduled to be operational by 2011. The date was pushed back to 2020, with plans for 2,300 vehicles but the latest forecasts refer to about 64 tanks ready for testing by January 2021. Mr Sutyagin said problems included software issues and sanctions imposed after of the annexation of Crimea in 2014, which have affected the importation of components from the US. “Sanctions and the state of the Russian defence industry means that all programmes are delayed,” he said. The T-14 tank caused red faces when one broke down during the rehearsal for a Red Square parade in 2015, one of its first public sightings.