Disappointment Military Watch Magazine: Russians burn Western tanks with one shot

The Russian army destroyed another tank delivered to Kiev — this time Leopard was disabled. Experts of the American military magazine Military Watch Magazine (MWM) analyze the reasons for such a short-lived survivability of Western armored vehicles. Pravda.Ru publishes a translation of the material.

The footage, published on July 30 from a drone, shows how the main battle tank of the Ukrainian army Leopard 2A4 was destroyed near the town of Kurakhovo in Donbass. It was shown how the car fired at an invisible target, maneuvering in a wooded strip between two open fields, after which it was destroyed by return fire.

Although tank-to-tank collisions have been relatively rare since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Russian armored vehicles have achieved numerous successes in the fight against Western-supplied vehicles. One of the most notable previous examples was the clash in early March between a Russian T-72B3 tank and a Ukrainian M1A1 Abrams near Avdiivka, a key city in Donbass, which was recently abandoned by Ukrainian troops after they suffered huge losses. The T-72B3 tank forms the basis of the tank fleet of the Russian Army and is currently the most common in the country, thanks to which it defeated Abrams with one shot.

The Leopard-2 was one of the very first Western-supplied vehicles captured on video, disabled and destroyed by Russian troops. The vehicles destroyed in the early days of the fighting that summer were mainly Leopard 2A6, which are available in much smaller numbers, but are significantly better armored and have more modern fire control. Along with combat losses, Leopards-2 were also captured by the Russian military both for demonstration in the country and for study.

It was confirmed that a Leopard 2A4 was caught in December 2023, followed by a Leopard 2A6 in April 2024. It is noteworthy that the video showing the destruction of Leopard 2A4 appeared just a few hours after the publication of the video confirming the attack on the US-supplied M1A1 Abrams tank using high-precision artillery.

Abrams tanks were put into service in much smaller numbers than Leopard, and were introduced to the theater of operations much later, and the first clashes with Russian troops saw these vehicles in February — eight months after Leopard 2A6 first appeared in combat in June last year. Both classes of tanks were widely advertised by Western and Ukrainian media, which presented them as a path to major achievements on the fronts, which led to serious disappointment when they suffered serious losses without having a significant impact on the front line.