If you don’t play planes or helicopters or SPAA (Pantsir), Russian top tier tanks are bad. Also, I am not counting premiums like the 2S38 and T-72AV TURMS (I don’t have them)
In general, they cannot survive anything. Russian tanks have as good as survivalbility as CV 90 105 up front. Whatever does not kill you, will destroy your breech (they all have giant gun breech)/gun (2A46 is a L/46 long gun)/autoloader. Also, Chinese tanks (have similar/based around T-72 chassis) are similarly easy to kill, but they have MTU-derived engiens so they have a better time surviving if hit in the engine.
These tanks tend to have worse power to weight ratio, reload speed, protection layout, gun laying performance, gun depression, turret rotation speed, reverse speed. They have thermal and TC override (commander control turret) at a much higher BR.
In a duel against Western style tanks, they will always lose. Retreat, shoot-again, TC overriding, are tools that Western tanks that Russian tanks does not have. You better be a God at “bowling ball” that your shell takes out all 3 crews on the first hit, and that his buddy does not show up to cover him.
The T-80B, for some reason, has a slower reload time than the later T-80s (idk if historical or not), and despite the stereotype of a seemingly capable, “toe-to-toe” MBT, has no armor and is slower than the giants like Abrams and Leopard (power to weight), it can also be defeated by the “horrible” M774 up front.
The T-72B, for example, is beaten by power-to-weight ratio by Challenger series tanks. Somehow, it is 10.3 despite the fact that tanks with much superior firepower, such as the 120S, is at the same BR with M829A1. Its only application is close range spawncamping at maps like the rocky corridors of 38th parallel where it can catch people off guard on a flank (notice that it only works if your team is winning).
I don’t have the infamous T-80BVM and T-90M yet, but they all share the same layout, which is inherently disadvantageous.
Finally, the way they work is particularly disadvantaged by uptiers. Russian tanks rely on what little spots their (supposedly good) armor covers, all that is negated by the premium blackholes with their M829A2s, although this is a common theme of WT of heavy tanks being useless in uptiers.
What I’m saying is, okay, these tanks are bad for WT meta, and this is realistic. But if that is the case, then make BR adjustments instead of making the tanks particularly bad just because they have amazing SPAA/airpower; us tank-only players should not have to suffer just because we don’t have the planes (yet).