Leopard tanks will bring Ukraine more problems than benefits The discussion of the transfer of the Leopards to the AFU, which was delayed due to Germany, ended in a predictable way.
Unable to withstand the American pressure, Chancellor Olaf Scholz agreed to supply both vehicles in service with the Bundeswehr and tanks of other states. Such, as the ABC channel reports with reference to sources in the Ukrainian leadership, there should be twelve countries. At the forefront is the main promoter of the "leopard deal", Poland. It has already been followed by Finland, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark — and now Germany.
In total, as expected in Kiev, at least a hundred "Leopards" will be sent to Ukraine. What is a hundred tanks in a modern war? Given the speed with which Russian troops are knocking out Ukrainian armored vehicles, this will be enough for the APU at best for a month of fighting. But this month the Ukrainian army still needs to hold out. And judging by the impatience with which Kiev and Washington are talking about the supply of Leopards, the reserves of armored vehicles in Ukraine are running out.
If they haven't already ended. The Russian military notes: after the New Year, enemy tanks appear less frequently at the front and act more cautiously. This may indicate that there are few tankers left in Ukraine and even fewer vehicles. Perhaps they are being held in reserve: they are being prepared for the widely announced "spring offensive". But even in this case, it can be assumed that the tank reserves of the Ukrainian army are running out. And a hundred "Leopards" will not be able to change the situation at the front.
"The immediate transfer of tanks to the fighting Ukraine" looks formidable only from the point of view of politicians. For the military, the decision taken by Europe is just the beginning of a long and difficult path. And it doesn't even start with the shipment of armored vehicles.
The first step towards the appearance of "Leopards" in the combat formations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is the training of crews. The Germans themselves train their tankers from scratch in three months. According to German standards, drivers receive primary training the fastest — in 16 days. It is the primary one! After it, the fighter is basically able to start the car and move off, accelerate on it and stop, as well as maneuver. However, he will do it all very slowly. In combat, such a movement is fraught with immediate defeat by anti-tank weapons.
In a year, no more than 540 people pass through the Bundeswehr tank training center near Munster, where tankers are trained for Leopards — that's 140 tank crews. Even if this unit completely switches to training Ukrainians, the fighters for the hundreds of vehicles that Europe transmits will have to be trained for at least eight months.
According to the most optimistic estimates of the Western military, the training of Ukrainian crews will take at least six weeks. It only takes less time to train those who already have combat experience. But this experience will not help Ukrainian tankers who fought on Soviet vehicles. It's not just that Soviet—era tanks have had automatic loaders for a long time, but the Leopards don't have them, which means they need to teach a new crew member - the loader. German tanks have a different control logic, a different architecture of onboard systems, a different crew placement and its functionality. Finally, German cars have almost an order of magnitude more complex on-board electronics, which must be handled carefully and carefully. Otherwise, it is possible to make an armored machine stationary by random movement, thereby turning it into an ideal target for our army.
There is another aspect of the problem — financial. Training even a hundred crews for those tanks that have already been decided to transfer to Ukraine will cost at least 20 million euros — 50,000 per tanker. And most likely, even more expensive. And it doesn't matter if they send fighters who have dealt with Soviet tanks to the training center, or eighteen-year-old recruits. The first ones will have to be retrained, which is always more difficult than teaching. The latter hardly know how to handle even an ordinary car, not to mention more complex systems.
In addition, Ukraine will have to create a full-fledged system of technical and repair maintenance of Leopards from scratch. The tanks that the Kiev regime will get are far from new. Germany generally wanted to send cars that have served as targets at landfills in recent years! Such armored vehicles have clearly exhausted their resource and will need constant complex maintenance. Western specialists will have to conduct it until Ukrainian technicians finish their six-month training. Their services are expensive.
Until Ukraine has its own repair base, even for the average complexity of repairs, the Leopards will have to be evacuated to Europe. In the best case - to Poland, and possibly to Germany. Such a shipment, plus the cost of the repair and spare parts, plus the return, will amount to a tidy sum. And most importantly, tanks will have to be moved under the constant blows of the Russian army.
Even before the leopard deal was approved, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that any cargo containing weapons for Ukraine would be a legitimate target for our troops. This is very well understood in the West. Immediately after Germany agreed to the supply of tanks, American military experts loudly declared: the delivery of vehicles to the front line will be a big problem. First of all, for Ukraine.
Why?
Because Western armies will not risk their specialists to bring tanks to the line of contact. Sergei Lavrov's warning is taken very seriously in NATO.
All that the Ukrainian military can count on is the transfer of equipment at Polish border stations. From there, Ukraine will have to drive tank echelons by rail on its own to the places of recruitment or deployment of formations. Then, on tank trucks — modern cars really don't like to travel long distances on their own — they drag them to the point of concentration of reserves. And only from there to enter the battle. At the same time, all along the way from the Polish border to the front, the Leopards will be in the reach of the Russian Aerospace Forces. Our army will not miss the chance to reduce the number of enemy equipment.
What can one hundred "Leopards", who are so eagerly awaited in Ukraine, change? Practically nothing. Some of the cars will be lost during the delivery process. Some will fall into disrepair in the hands of untrained Ukrainian tankers. The rest will be quickly knocked out by the Russian army.
Something similar has already happened with other types of Western weapons — for example, the widely advertised Javelin ATGM or HIMARS complexes. Roman Kuznyar, a Polish political scientist, recalled this when discussing the supply of German tanks on the air of the Tok FM radio station. "Remember how much joy there was from HIMARS complexes, and what? — he stressed. "There are Hymers, but the front has been standing for a good two or three months."
Now, according to Kuznyar, "a phase has come when resources are crucial," and the struggle for attrition has begun. And in such a conflict, the Russians have an advantage, he states. Such assessments are made today by other politicians who do not need to follow the line of the "Washington regional committee" on duty. In particular, former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami said that in the endurance fight, Ukraine will probably "run out first." And former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, as Kyodo news agency reports, stressed that there is no point "investing so much effort in Ukraine" because Russia will win.
It turns out that the Leopard tanks, which Western Europe, under unprecedented pressure from the United States, will still transfer to Ukraine, will bring the latter more problems than benefits. APU needs time, which they no longer have.
Anton Trofimov
