Ukraine got just 21 long-gun Leopard 2A6 tanks from Germany, and assigned all of them to the army’s 47th Mechanized Brigade, the unit leading Kyiv’s counteroffensive along the 50-mile axis threading from Robotyne through Tokmak to Melitopol in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine.
After losing three of the 69-ton, four-person tana ks in a direct assault on the first line of Russian defenses south of Mala Tokmachka in early June, the 47th Brigade switched up its tanks tactics. For the next three months, the Leopard 2A6s with their 55-caliber, 120-millimeter smoothbore main guns and precise day-night optics mostly fought at long range, and at night.
But that doesn’t mean a Leopard 2A6 can’t—and, in the hands of the battle-hardened 47th Brigade, won’t—roll right up on a Russian position, in broad daylight, and open fire.
That’s exactly what happened somewhere on the Melitopol axis recently. A video that the 47th Brigade posted online on Friday depicts a brutal, close, daylight fight between a Ukrainian combined-arms team—a tank, a fighting vehicle and infantry—and unseen Russians.
It seems one of the 47th Brigade’s American-made M-2 fighting vehicles was advancing south across an open field alongside a Leopard 2A6 when the mechanized team came under fire. Artillery blasts are visible in the background of the video. Incoming small arms fire zips over the camera-operator’s head.
As the Russians fire machine guns from a treeline, the M-2 pulls back and drops its ramp so its six embarked infantry—armed with M-16 rifles and an anti-tank rocket—can scurry out. “Come on!” one soldier shouts as the others dive for cover in what appears to be a former Russian trench. A soldier speculates that the Russians are firing white-phosphorous incendiary weapons.
The Leopard 2 advances as its teammates fall back, firing its main gun to suppress the Russians. “Close your ears!” a Ukrainian shouts as the tank’s long-barrel cannon coughs out 120-milleter shells.
Over the next few seconds, the Leopard 2A6’s balanced design is on dramatic display. The tank points its rear-mounted engine toward the Russians, perhaps to offer the crew additional protection from anti-tank missiles, then jinks forward and backward between shots—likely to frustrate the Russians’ aim.
Note that this back-and-forth jinking isn’t possible in many Soviet-style tanks, including the mainstay T-72, because they lack the fast reverse gears that are standard on more-mobile Western-style tanks.
The dismounted Ukrainian infantry know they’re witnessing something special: one of the world’s best tanks doing what vehicle-maker Krauss-Maffei Wegmann designed it to do. “Yeehaw!” the infantry shout as the tank’s shells lance into the unseen Russian position.
It’s hard to say whether the close fight signals another shift in the 47th Brigade’s tactics. Certainly, the battlefield is changing as the brigade advances along the Melitopol axis. The minefields are getting less dense. The increasingly-degraded Russian artillery corps is firing fewer and fewer shells.
Maybe it’s safer for the 18 Leopard 2A6s the 47th Brigade has left to close on Russian positions. And maybe, soon, we’ll see Ukraine’s other best tanks—its roughly three-dozen older Leopard 2A4Vs, 13 surviving ex-British Challenger 2s and 31 still-arriving, ex-American M-1s—do the same.
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