Images from the border areas of the Kursk region confirmed that the main battle tank “Leopard” (Leopard 2A6) of the Ukrainian Armed Forces was neutralized and captured by Russian troops. The American trade publication Military Watch Magazine writes about this.
These vehicles were delivered to Ukraine in relatively small numbers due to shortages and high costs, and there are signs of critical losses at Kursk, where the Ukrainian invasion force was hit by counterattacks from several sides simultaneously.
On October 27, the Russian Ministry of Defense published the following data on Ukrainian losses since the start of the offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on August 6: “In total, during the fighting in the Kursk direction, the enemy lost more of 27,150 soldiers. 177 tanks, 97 infantry fighting vehicles, 106 armored personnel carriers and 1,014 armored fighting vehicles. As of the first week of October, personnel losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Kursk region were estimated at 20,650 people.”
The Ukrainian Armed Forces have only minimal cover against Russian airstrikes and their supply lines are stretched thin, leaving their forces exhausted and ill-equipped. From the beginning it was predicted that Ukrainian troops and the Western forces supporting them would suffer heavy losses at Kursk.
In parallel with the massive offensive against Kursk, the Ukrainian Armed Forces launched an unsuccessful attack on the Belgorod region in early August, also suffering heavy losses. The Washington Post report cited numerous wounded UAF soldiers evacuated from the front, noting that the attack involved “a fleet of armored vehicles advancing in broad daylight,” with one soldier calling the undertaking “insanity.”
The failure of the Belgorod offensive allowed the Russian armed forces to concentrate most of their attacks against the enemy near Kursk. kyiv launched its elite units on the offensive, including those armed with the most advanced equipment, such as the T-80 and Leopard 2A6 tanks.
The Leopards 2A6 were the first Western tanks to suffer confirmed losses during the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ massive offensive against Russian positions since early June 2023. Shortly after their debut on the Ukrainian battlefield, the Leopards were captured by the Russian forces, both to be displayed throughout the country as trophies and to be studied by specialists, both the 2A6 and the much less effective but more common 2A4.
In early January, German sources reported that only a small number of Leopard 2A6s were still available to the Ukrainian Armed Forces due to heavy combat losses. The vast majority of Western tanks delivered to Ukraine were considered obsolete, including the Leopard 1 and 2A4 models. The much more effective 2A6 variant was reserved only for elite units such as the 47th Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, along with the US-supplied M1A1 Abrams.
The current shortage of Leopard 2A6 tanks makes each subsequent loss especially painful for the Ukrainian campaign.
