1st Guards Tank Army, military unit 73621
(Moscow Region, Odintsovo District, Bakovka settlement)

In February 2016, a new tank army was formed in Russia for the first time in a quarter of a century . And today the western borders of the country are covered by two full-blooded military associations. This is not a repetition of the experience of the cold war of the 20th century, but the answer to the modern Western strategy of containing Russia.

The 1st Guards Tank Army is a divisions-sized formation tank army of the Russian Ground Forces. This requires a bit of explanation. During the Cold War, Soviet divisions - with about 10,000 soldiers - were always smaller than their similarly named Western counterparts, which typically had rather more than 15,000 soldiers. In no small part this was due to the fact that Western divisions had a variety of organic support formations that were deployed at the Corps rather than Division level in the Soviet Army. Whatever the cause, this practice had the additional benefit of inflating the size of the Soviet army relative to the West, when measured in divisions.

In recent years, the division as a command echelon has rather gone out of fashion around the world, as brigades have become the command echelon of choice. In the Overseas Contingency Operations since 9/11, the US Army had deployed brigades, with divisions serving as home stations, much as Regiments were the home stations of the deployed battalions of the British imperial army of the 19th Century. As the post-Soviet army shrank after 1991, individual units withered, and brigades assumed the lineage and honors of pre-existing divisions. Putin reversed this trend in 2012, when the 2nd and 4th Brigades [hnorifices aside] were upgraded to Divisions. and their subordinate battalions in turn became brigades. One happy effect of this move was to inflate the rank structure, as former brigade officers now became division officers of higher rank, though with no greater responsibility. Thus a Tank Army, of two divisions and multiple seperate brigades, can have an actual troop strength of a division in a Western army.

The need to create the 1st Guards Tank Army arose due to the fact that the control of the 20th Guards Army was transferred from Nizhny Novgorod to Voronezh, closer to the Ukrainian border. The command of the 1st Guards Tank Army was formed in the Moscow Region on 13 November 2014. She continues the tradition of the 1st Guards Tank Army, which during the Great Patriotic War was commanded by Marshal of Armored Forces Mikhail Katukov. In the Armed Forces of the USSR and Russia, the 1st Guards Tank Army existed from April 1944 to 1999.

The headquarters of the 1st Guards Tank Army was recreated in the Armed Forces of Russia 23 July 2015. It was reported by Interfax with reference to a source in the military department. The structure of the unit included the Fourth Guards Kantemirov Tank Division, the Second Guards Taman Motor Rifle Division, the Sixth Tank Brigade, the 27th Guards Sevastopol Motor Rifle Brigade. The army headquarters is located in the village of Bakovka.