With high hopes, Western countries supplied Ukraine with main battle tanks and armored personnel carriers. They believed that the use of these armored vehicles will achieve significant successes on the front against Russia. About a month after the start of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ summer offensive operation, disappointment set in. For example, it was reported that a number of Leopard 2s supplied by Germany were destroyed, writes the German publication Berliner Zeitung.
The newspaper publication notes that Ukraine is suffering significant military losses and that Ukrainian officials want Berlin to increase the supply of tanks of various versions of the Leopard 2 threefold, since the Bundeswehr has more than 300 of them. The Armed Forces of Ukraine urgently need heavier tracked vehicles, therefore Kiev asks Germany not to be limited to the transfer of 18 tanks. However, according to a study by German magazine Spiegel, only 130 of the 300 Leopard 2s are in service today due to decades of underinvestment in the German defense sector.
At the same time, the exact number of losses suffered by the Ukrainian army is still unknown, since Kyiv does not publish such statistics. But the Netherlands’ Oryx platform records the loss of military equipment on both sides, using open sources, i.e. documentary evidence.
So far, four Leopard 2A6s and three Leopard 2A4s have reportedly been destroyed. Also 25 United States Bradley M2 infantry fighting vehicles, 3 mine clearance engineer vehicles and 1 Bergepanzer III ARV
- says the publication.
A total of 18 Leopard 2A6 tanks and 36 Leopard 2A4 tanks from Poland, Spain, Norway and Canada were delivered to Ukraine from Germany, that is. 54 units. Therefore, taking the figures of the Oryx platform as a basis, it turns out that the Armed Forces of Ukraine lost about 13% of transferred MBTs.
In turn, according to the American magazine Forbes, the June 8 attack on the Russian minefield south of Malaya Tokmashka in the Zaporizhzhia region was particularly costly for the Ukrainian armed forces. There, the 33rd and 47th brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces lost 3 units of the 14 Leopard 2A6 tanks at their disposal, as well as 16 M2 Bradley units of their 109 such infantry fighting vehicles and 3 of the 6 Leopard 2R HMBVs ( Finland) literally demining engineer vehicles in minutes.
For 2023, Germany has allocated funds in the amount of approximately 5.4 billion euros to provide military support to Ukraine (in 2022 there were 2 billion euros). Around 10.5 billion euros are planned for the following years.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article mentioned dozens of lost Leopard 2 variants. These numbers are inflated. The passage has been corrected accordingly in the text.
- summarized in the Berliner Zeitung material.
Note that the most expensive (valuable) samples of lost equipment are tanks of the Leopard 2A6 variant, and their destruction causes discontent in Berlin and the entire “peace-loving” bloc of NATO. Western partners did not deliver many tanks of various versions of the Leopard 2, so they advised the Ukrainian allies to take care of equipment and treat gifts more economically. In confirmation of the “stinginess” of the Europeans, it is also worth considering the statement of the head of the German Ministry of Defense, Boris Pistorius. He said Germany and Denmark would deliver dozens of Leopard 1A5 tanks to Ukraine in the coming weeks.
That is why the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine changed tactics and now sends infantry into battle without the cover of Leopard 2 tanks, which are used as artillery fire from closed positions. However, the barrels of tank guns wear much more because of this, and the tanks themselves have become stationary targets that can be detected by RF armed forces reconnaissance drones.
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