The Ukrainian army lost three of its precious Leopard 2 tanks in quick succession in recent days. According to open-source intelligence analyst Andrew Perpetua, videos that circulated online this week seem to confirm the destruction of three Leopard 2A4s in southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Oblast.
It’s Ukraine’s heaviest loss of Western-made tanks since Kyiv’s forces launched their long-anticipated 2023 counteroffensive across several axes in Zaporizhzhia and neighboring Donetsk Oblasts back in early June.
But the spike in tank losses belies Ukraine’s overall success in preserving its Western tanks, which so far include 40 German-made Leopard 2A4s and 21 Leopard 2A6s, a few dozen Leopard 1A5s, 10 Strv 122s from Sweden, 14 Challenger 2s from the United Kingdom and 31 American-made M-1A1s. Additional Leopard 1s and Leopard 2s are scheduled for delivery.
In four months of hard fighting, the Ukrainians have lost just five Leopard 2A4s, three Leopard 2A6s and a single Challenger 2. Nine Western tanks out of 150 or so that Kyiv’s allies have delivered.
For the most part, the Ukrainian army and separate air-assault forces have been careful to deploy the tanks when and where they’re most effective—although the army’s 47th Mechanized Brigade arguably exposed its Leopard 2A6s to undue risk in a direct assault across a Russian minefield south of Mala Tokmachka, 50 miles north of Russian-occupied Melitopol in Zaporizhzhia, in early June.
That failed assault cost the 47th Brigade at least one of the German-built tanks.
After the Mala Tokmachka debacle, the 47th and other brigades operating Western tanks—including the 33rd Mechanized with its Leopard 2A4s, the Challenger 2-operating 82nd Air Assault and the 21st Mechanized with its Strv 122s—deployed its tanks at night, and also assigned them to shell Russian positions from miles away.
That had the effect of preserving the tank force without idling it. Careful use, plus the hard work of repair depots in Poland and Germany, kept the Ukrainian brigades close to full strength through the summer.
Why losses have spiked in recent days is hard to say, but it’s possible the back-to-back-to-back loss of three Leopard 2A4s—to Russian drones, mostly—reflects harder use. It seems the 33rd Mechanized Brigade, the only user of Leopard 2A4s in Ukraine, lately has been handling more of the hardest fighting along the Melitopol axis.
The 47th Mechanized previously led the counteroffensive along that axis. The Ukrainian general staff recently pulled the brigade from the front for rest and reset, while also deploying some of its battalions to the east to reinforce the defensive effort around Avdiivka, whose Ukrainian garrison has been destroying attacking Russian columns at near-record rates.
The 33rd may have moved forward as the 47th moved back and east. The more assaults the 33rd Mechanized Brigade leads, the more tanks it’s likely to lose.
If there’s any comfort to find in the spike in Leopard 2 losses, it’s that the 33rd and adjacent brigades have continued to advance toward Melitopol. “The activity of the enemy has not decreased for three months,” one Russian Telegram channel noted.
The tank crews’ sacrifices—if indeed any crews actually perished when their vehicles were struck—weren’t in vain.
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