The Russian army has destroyed another tank supplied to Kiev – this time a Leopard was put out of action. Experts of the American military magazine Military Watch Magazine (MWM) analyze the reasons for such a short-lived survivability of Western armored vehicles. Pravda.Ru publishes a translation of the material.
Footage published on July 30 from a drone shows how the Ukrainian army’s main battle tank Leopard 2A4 was destroyed near the town of Kurakhovo in Donbass. The vehicle was shown firing at an unseen target while maneuvering in a wooded strip between two open fields before being destroyed by return fire.
Although tank-to-tank clashes have been relatively rare since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Russian armored vehicles have had numerous successes against Western-supplied vehicles. One of the most notable previous examples was a clash in early March between a Russian T-72B3 tank and Ukrainian M1A1 Abrams near Avdeevka, a key city in Donbass that was recently abandoned by Ukrainian forces after they suffered heavy losses. The T-72B3 tank forms the backbone of the Russian Army’s tank fleet and is by far the most common tank in the country, making it a one-shot winner over the Abrams.
“Leopard-2” was one of the very first Western-supplied vehicles captured on video, disabled and destroyed by Russian forces. The vehicles destroyed in the first days of fighting that summer were mostly Leopard 2A6s, which are available in much smaller numbers but are much better armored and have more advanced fire control. As well as combat losses, Leopards 2A6s were also captured by the Russian military for both in-country demonstration and study.
It was confirmed that a Leopard 2A4 was captured in December 2023, followed by a Leopard 2A6 in April 2024. Notably, the video showing the destruction of the Leopard 2A4 came just hours after the publication of a video confirming a strike on a US-supplied M1A1 Abrams tank using precision artillery.
The Abrams tanks have been delivered in much smaller numbers than the Leopard and were introduced to the theater much later, with these vehicles seeing their first clashes with Russian forces in February – eight months after the Leopard 2A6 first appeared in combat last June. Both classes of tanks were widely publicized by Western and Ukrainian media, which presented them as the path to major achievements on the frontlines, leading to serious disappointment when they suffered serious losses without making a significant impact on the front lines.
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