The Ukrainian 4th Tank Brigade Was Running Out Of Tanks. Then It Got Leopard 2s.

It appears the 4th Tank Brigade will be the first Ukrainian army unit to operate those Leopard 2 tanks Kyiv’s allies have pledged to the war effort. The battle-weary unit’s new tanks could save it from a slow collapse.

One big clue is the presence of a 4th Tank Brigade officer, Maj. Vadim Khodak, at the training range in Poland where Ukrainian officers are learning to operate the four-person, 69-ton tank with its tough armor, precise optics and powerful 120-millimeter smoothbore gun.

“The vehicle is of high quality, very good,” Khodak said of the German-designed Leopard 2. “What I like is that our soldiers like it very much.”

Khodak was referring to the first of the 14 Leopard 2A4s that Poland has donated to Ukraine. The 1985-vintage 2A4s are some of the oldest of the 59 Leopard 2s that a consortium of Kyiv’s allies—Canada, Germany, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden in addition to Poland—so far have pledged.

The tank consignment also includes 21 of the latest, long-gun Leopard 2A6s and 10 Swedish Stridsvagn 122s that are derivatives of the Leopard 2A5. If Khodak and his tankers like the old 2A4s, their colleagues in other battalions or brigades should love the much more modern 2A5s and 2A6s.

However, any Leopard is an upgrade over the older, Soviet-style tanks—T-72s and maybe T-64s—the 4th Tank Brigade currently operates. The Leopard 2 has better optics than a T-72 has and tougher armor than a T-64 has.

The 4th Tank Brigade is one of just five tank brigades in the Ukrainian army. The unit formed in 2017, three years after Russian troops first seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula then invaded eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

Early on, the 4th Tank Brigade’s four tank battalions—each with two or three dozen tanks—operated the Ukrainian-built T-64, including the standard T-64BV and the upgraded T-64BM with improved armor.

But the whole Ukrainian army—not just the tank brigades, but also the tank battalions in mechanized brigades—before the war had just 800 T-64s in active use plus 450 or so in storage. The Russians have destroyed or captured around 300 of them in the first year of their wider war on Ukraine.

The T-64s are running out. And that seems to be why the 4th Tank Brigade lately has been spotted operating less-capable T-72AMT tanks from Ukrainian stocks and T-72M1s that Kyiv has received from foreign allies including Poland and the Czech Republic.

Before Poland handed over the first four Leopard 2A4s in late February, the 4th Tank Brigade was devolving, technologically speaking.

“Currently we significantly lack armored vehicles,” Khodak conceded. The Leopard 2s could reverse that trend and restore some of the combat power the brigade has lost in a year of hard combat. “I hope that when we arrive with vehicles at the front line, it will save the lives of many of our soldiers and bring us closer to victory.”

The 4th Tank Brigade is transitioning at least one of its tank battalions to the Leopard 2A4 while its other battalions are in the thick of the fighting, in and around Bakhmut in Donbas.

Just how many of the brigade’s battalions get Leopard 2s likely depends on exactly how Kyiv chooses to deploy the 40 2A4s Poland, Norway and Spain have pledged.

Forty tanks could equip one large battalion or two small ones. It would make logistical sense to assign all 40 2A4s to the same brigade, but it might make tactical sense to give two different brigades one battalion each of Leopard 2A4s.

If the battle for Bakhmut grinds on much longer, the 4th Tank Brigade 2A4s could join that fight. If that apocalyptic battle finally, mercifully ends soon, the brigade might save its Leopard 2s for Ukraine’s widely-anticipated spring counteroffensive.