Ukraine's 60-Year-Old Leopard Tank Switched from Sniper Mode—and Russian Troops Never Saw It Coming
The Leopard 1A5 is old but still useful
When Russian infantry seized a position east of Pokrovsk, a fortress city in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, one of the Ukrainian army’s German-made Leopard 1A5s left its hideout to blast the Russians with a 105-millimeter shell fired at point-blank range.
Frustrated in their attempts to directly attack Pokrovsk, Russian forces are trying to flank the city—by rolling through the town of Kostyantynivka, 40 km to the northeast.
On Wednesday, a substantial Russian force—around a dozen up-armored BMPs and other vehicles—split into two sections and rolled northeast from the village of Novoolenivka, heading for the village of Yablunivka, the next stop on the road to Kostyantynivka.
They didn’t get very far. The Ukrainian 36th Marine Brigade and 12th Azov Brigade spotted the approaching vehicles—and hit them with drones and potentially other munitions. When the smoke cleared, half or more of the vehicles were on fire.
But some Russians managed to gain a lodgement around Yablunivka on or just before Thursday. We know this because the Ukrainian 5th Heavy Mechanized Brigade spotted the Russians with a drone—and deployed a Leopard 1A5 to take them out.