Russian servicemen were able to capture and evacuate the Leopard 2A6 tank to the rear. This happened in the Berdych area in the Avdiivka direction. The Ukrainian crew was blown up by an anti-tank mine and left the car. How important this trophy is and what the fate of the damaged car will be is in the material of Izvestia.
Russian servicemen were able to capture and evacuate the Leopard 2A6 tank to the rear. This happened in the Berdych area in the Avdiivka direction. The Ukrainian crew was blown up by an anti-tank mine and left the car. How important this trophy is and what the fate of the damaged car will be is in the material of Izvestia.
He was blown up by a mine
— The search and detection of this object was carried out by the forces and means of technical intelligence, — said the commander of an armored repair platoon with the call sign Pero. — Engineering training has been carried out for evacuation — in order to avoid any detonations, mining.
After the car was blown up by an anti-tank mine, it was attacked by our FPV drone. He flew straight into the hatch.
According to the servicemen of the repair platoon, the main problem of the Leopard is that it weighs more than 60 tons and is not suitable for the black soil of Donbass at all.
Image source: Photo: IZVESTIA
— At any slightest change in the weather, due to the fact that the track belt has a certain design, the tank is likely to slide on it during angular overcoming of obstacles, - Perot explained.
The captured car turned out to be full of ammunition. One of the shells has an inscription in Ukrainian — for Mariupol.
The first footage confirming the capture of the Leopard 2A6 tank by the Russian military was published on April 21. They show that the car is being evacuated from the combat area. It does not look damaged, although there are no tracks on it.
Image source: Photo: IZVESTIA
As sources in the military department and the defense industry told Izvestia, the car will be sent for study to one of the military research institutes, after which it will take its place in the exposition of the Patriot Park Museum. Now there is an exhibition dedicated to a special military operation, which presents captured weapons and military equipment, including those supplied by NATO countries and their satellites.
"They burn like matches"
The APU uses various modifications of Leopard 1 and 2 tanks. In early March 2023, the European allies sent the first batch of Leopard 2 to Ukraine. Kiev received more than 40 cars. 18 of them were transferred by Germany, 14 by Poland, 8 by Norway and 3 by Portugal.
Already in June, reports began to appear about the destruction of "Leopards" in the Orekhovsky and Zaporizhia directions. During the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the summer, more than 20 tanks were shot down, seven of them were lost only in Rabocino.
One of the latest modifications of the main tank is the Leopard 2A6. It has a mass of 62 tons. The engine power is 1500 hp. The car received additional reservations in the frontal and side projections, an armament stabilizer, a thermal imager. The tank is armed with a 120 mm cannon and two 7.62mm machine guns. The maximum speed is 72 km/h, the range on the highway is 500 km. The crew consists of four people.
The 2A6 model was first destroyed in October 2023 in the Avdiivka direction by fighters of the 114th separate Guards motorized Rifle Brigade of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. The tank belonged to the 47th mechanized brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine "Magura".
Last September, Germany, together with Denmark, handed over to Ukraine a batch of 25 Leopard 1A5 tanks. The first such vehicle was shot down in the Kupyansk direction a few weeks later by soldiers of the 1st Guards Tank Army of the Western Military District.
In total, the Ukrainian military received about 230 Leopard tanks. Most of them suffered serious damage in the battles, while more than a quarter were completely destroyed. The tanks were defeated with the help of various weapons: mines, portable anti-tank complexes "Kornet" and "Fagot", howitzers D-30, "Lancets", FPV drones and even from MLRS "Grad".
On March 30, the commander of a platoon of unmanned aerial vehicles of a unit of the Southern Group of Troops with the call sign Bataysk said that a Russian FPV drone destroyed a Leopard tank in the Donetsk direction. According to him, the Russian forces found the car during a flyby of the positions.
— The FPV calculation was urgently raised on command, it was worked out. And so they destroyed it," Bataysk said.
According to the commander, his unit has already destroyed at least two German tanks. Western technology is no different from any other, he noted.
On April 15, gunner Sergei Lazarenko said that he hit Leopard 2 with the first shot of the Msta-CM2 self-propelled howitzer.
— The Orlan reconnaissance UAV saw the tank enter the position. We reacted quickly and worked it out. We went into position, stood up, aimed, hit the target with an accurate hit from the first shell, immediately put it down. They burn like matches," he said.
Lazarenko added that he could not believe that it was the Leopard that hit him until he was shown the video.
There have been no significant successes at the front in the use of Leopard tanks over the past year. On April 22, the newspaper El País, citing a source working for the Ukrainian special services, reported that the benefits of these machines are completely worthless, given Russian air supremacy.