OPEN LETTER/ Come to the dialogue and listen to me speak, otherwise I will cut off your scholarships, you will rot in prison. Please!

 Kliko këtu për të tjera
Voxpress:

Report: German tank "Leopard 2", a failure on the battlefield

2025-04-14 17:17:51Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Report: German tank "Leopard 2", a failure on the battlefield
Leopard 2 tank in use by Ukrainian forces

Germany's Leopard 2 tanks are failing on the battlefield in Ukraine, according to an assessment by the German Defense Ministry.

In a classified transcript of a meeting between a German defense attaché stationed in Kiev and around 200 Bundeswehr soldiers, the diplomat revealed the difficulties Ukrainians are encountering in operating heavy weapons.

Eighteen of the Bundeswehr's Leopard 2 main battle tanks arrived in Ukraine in 2023 after months of procrastination by Chancellor Olaf Scholz and a national public debate over whether Berlin should send heavy weapons to Ukraine.

Scholz finally agreed to do so after the Biden administration agreed to send Abrams tanks and public sentiment in Germany began to shift in favor of Ukraine.

But despite all the hype, Ukrainian soldiers are discovering that the Leopard 2 has limited use, says the transcript, which was published by three German media outlets.

Some of the problems have to do with how war itself is changing.

The Leopard 2 is vulnerable to drone attacks, like tanks in general, the transcript says. However, the Leopard 2's complex design makes it difficult to repair on the battlefield, meaning damaged Leopards have to be sent to specialized repair teams in western Ukraine or even flown as far as Poland for repair and maintenance.

In many cases, the problems of the "Leopard 2" have forced Ukrainian battalions to use them primarily as fixed artillery.

"The main problem with the Leopard 2s that have been given to Ukraine is that there are very few of them. If one or two need to be repaired, that's a big part of what Ukraine has that suddenly goes out of service for a while," said Sergey Sumlenny, managing director of the Berlin-based European Resilience Initiative Center.

He has been making almost monthly trips to the front line since 2022. He added: "The Leopard 2s were also not designed for the Ukrainian battlefield. They work well when they have good air support, but Ukraine lacks that."

Sumlenny said that post-war German thinking also plays a role. "They were designed by a generation of German manufacturers who had not seen war, and therefore they tended to overcomplicate the system. The older systems, designed in the 1960s by those who actually saw war, are much more useful on the battlefield, but have weaker armor," he said.

Defense experts in Germany say Ukraine's experience on the battlefield has clear lessons for the country's own procurement, especially if Russia chooses to test NATO.

Sara Nanni, the defense spokeswoman for the German Green Party, said a clear lesson is that the country simply needs to have more systems available. "We can no longer think about such small quantities. We have to assume that vehicles have a long downtime after they break down and simply need to be maintained," she said.

Germany is the second largest supplier of military equipment to Ukraine after the US, with the leaked transcript also identifying other problems with German-supplied systems, noting that even well-functioning equipment, such as air defense assets, suffered from insufficient ammunition reserves.


Në përputhje me standarded JTI

Video

SHIKO KANALIN NE YOUTUBE
×