Disabled???
I can disable a car by disconnecting the battery. A tank can get itself disabled by throwing a track or getting a lot of barbed wire tangled in the track and wheels.
These tanks have not been merely disabled, they have been shredded …
I think it was bad writing on the part of Reuters. Most of Ukraine’s main battle tanks ARE from the Soviet era. The T-64 was originally designed back in 1960s, back when Ukraine was part of the SSR. The T-72 is a further design evolution from the T-64 and the T-80 is further development of the T-72 and so on.
They were likely using up stockpiles already in Ukraine and buying ammo from other former Soviet countries to fulfill their needs. Making it yourself is cheaper and quicker to get them to the troops than if you are importing the ammo.
Russia has also been shooting off their stocks and will have to start producing more shells.
Ukraines advantage is that they also have NATO compatible artillery and can shoot NATO shells.
Since they have the guns and they are not totally worn out yet it makes sense to produce more shells for them, they ran out of shells before they ran out of tubes to shoot them through.
The point was that the Ukrainians (up until the introduction of western tanks) have been using “Soviet era” tanks, not only for the past year but since the breakaway Republics, no matter how good your stocks are, at some point your are going to need more ammunition, if only to rebuild your stock. It’s one of those non stories