The Ukrainians Can Finally Recover Their Leopard 2R Breaching Vehicles

The Ukrainian army is in a position to recover, attempt to repair and try to return to service some or all of the three Leopard 2R breaching vehicles it lost in a disastrous attempt to cross a Russian minefield south of Mala Tokmachka in southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Oblast on June 8.

A video that circulated online on Monday depicts Ukrainian forces at the site of the failed June 8 assault. It was evident days ago that the Ukrainians had found a way through or around the minefield and had advanced far enough to the south, toward the Russian strongpoint in neighboring Robotyne, that it was safe for mineclearing and recovery crews to work near Mala Tokmachka.

Ukrainian army engineers riding in at least one German-made Bergepanzer armored recovery vehicle already have begun retrieving some of the 17 ex-American M-2 infantry fighting vehicles the Ukrainian 47th Brigade abandoned in that minefield. There’s no reason the engineers can’t also tow away the three abandoned Leopard 2Rs and four abandoned Leopard 2A6 tanks—the latter apparently belonging to the 33rd Brigade.

Yes, the nearly 70-ton Leopard 2R and Leopard 2A6 are twice as heavy as an M-2 is. Yes, it might take two Bergepanzers or ex-Soviet IMR recovery vehicles—or one of Ukraine’s few American-made M-88 heavy ARVs—to tow a Leopard to a nearby road where crews can load it onto a heavylift truck. Recovering a vehicle as heavy as a Leopard 2R is hard, but it’s not complicated.

It’s worth the effort to try to repair the breaching vehicles. The 47th Brigade possesses, or possessed, all six of the Leopard 2Rs that vehicle-maker Patria originally built for the Finnish army. Helsinki pledged the six vehicles to Kyiv in anticipation of the Ukrainian armed forces’ 2023 counteroffensive, which kicked off on June 4.

Patria designed the two-person Leopard 2R with its heavy British-built plow to clear minefields, fill trenches and excavate earthen berms—a sequence of tasks armies call a “breach.”

Breaching vehicles are a precious asset for any army that’s attempting to fight its way through enemy fortifications the way the Ukrainian army is doing right now. Kyvi’s army still has scores of other specialized engineering vehicles—including locally-made BMR-64s—that can attempt a breach, but the Leopard 2Rs are among the heaviest and best-protected.

In a month of hard fighting, Ukrainian brigades have advanced a few miles along each of at least three main axes of attack in southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk Oblasts. They need to advance another 4o or 50 miles to reach the Black Sea and Sea of Azov coasts—the obvious ultimate goal of the current counteroffensive.

There are miles and miles of Russian minefields, trenches and berms between the current front line and the coast. Miles and miles of defenses that the Ukrainians will have to breach. To have any chance of succeeding, they’ll need all the breaching vehicles they can build, buy, borrow … or recover from some past battlefield.