The Ukrainian army lost one of its rare, and precious, Leopard 2A6 tanks outside Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine apparently sometime this week.
The loss—which may have been the result of a malfunction that compelled the German-made Leopard 2A6’s four crew to bail out—is notable for two reasons.
First, it extends Ukraine’s unfortunate streak of Leopard 2 losses. In a little over a week, Kyiv’s army has written off at least a dozen, and perhaps 13, of its Leopard 2A4s, Leopard 2A6s and Strv 122s. The latter are super-armored Swedish variants of the Leopard 2A5.
Add the six Leopard 2s the Ukrainians lost before last week, and the army is down a quarter of its best German-made tanks. Kyiv’s foreign allies have pledged 85 Leopard 2s and, so far, delivered 71 of them.
What’s also notable is where the most recent Leopard 2A6 loss occured, and what that says about Ukraine’s war plans. The army’s 47th Mechanized Brigade is the sole user of Ukraine’s Leopard 2A6s. That a Leopard 2A6 has showed up around Avdiivka, just northwest of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, means all or much of the 47th Mechanized Brigade is there, too.
That’s important because the 47th Brigade until recently was part of Kyiv’s counteroffensive corps in southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Oblast. In four months of hard fighting since the counteroffensive kicked off in early June, the brigade led Ukrainian forces on a 10-mile advance along the strategic axis toward Russian-occupied Melitopol.
It was a tough few months for the 47th Brigade. It lost several of its 21 Leopard 2A6s and dozens of its American-made M-2 infantry fighting vehicles, along with potentially hundreds of infantry and vehicle crews. Losses were so steep that Ukrainian general staff felt compelled to shake up the brigade’s leadership, mid-fight.
As the southern counteroffensive ebbed last month, the 47th Brigade seemed bound for a period of rest and reset. Some of its troops were photographed training behind the the front line.
But then, on Oct. 10, the Russian 2nd Combined Arms Army launched a multi-brigade assault on the Ukrainian garrison in Avdiivka, which includes the weary 110th Mechanized Brigade. It was apparent the Russians intended for the Avdiivka attack to draw Ukrainian brigades away from their counteroffensive and fix them in a defensive fight.
It didn’t work … until it did. “Ukrainian officials have already identified the Avdiivka push as a Russian fixing operation, and they are unlikely to unduly commit Ukrainian manpower to this axis,” the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C. noted early in the battle.
But as losses mounted on both sides in the course of back-to-back frontal assaults by Russian brigades, Kyiv pulled at least some of the 47th Mechanized Brigade’s battalions and companies away from their training grounds and redeployed them to Avdiivka.
The redeployed forces obviously included the 47th Brigade’s sole tank company with its surviving Leopard 2A6s, which before last week maybe numbered 18.
Now 17. It’s clear Kyiv is sufficiently worried about Avdiivka to commit to the city’s defense an exhausted brigade that’s desperately hanging onto its remaining tanks.
The recent loss of that Leopard 2A6 came around the same time the Ukrainian army’s 21st Mechanized Brigade, fighting along a different sector of eastern Ukraine, lost a Strv 122—perhaps its first. Meanwhile, the 33rd Mechanized Brigade, which replaced the 47th Brigade in the south, was losing the seventh or eighth of its 40 Leopard 2A4s.
Most of the Ukrainian tank losses are the result of mine strikes, top-down hits from explosives-laden drones—or both. But the Russians also have managed to plink at least one Strv 122 with an anti-tank guided missile. And the recent Leopard 2A6 write-0ff might be the result of a mechanical breakdown.
Tragically, it seems the 47th Brigade also lost an M-2 it sent to fetch the Leopard 2A6’s crew after the tankers bailed out.
The Russians are getting better at killing Ukrainian vehicles, especially tanks—and especially with drones. It may be cold comfort to the Ukrainians that they’re getting even better at destroying Russian vehicles.
Sure, the Ukrainian army in recent weeks has lost a dozen or so Leopard 2s plus a couple dozen T-64s and T-72s. The Russians meanwhile have lost potentially hundreds of T-62s, T-64s, T-72s, T-80s and T-90s while trying, and so far failing, to capture Avdiivka.
They may even have lost 55 tanks in a single day.
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