The Russian military has eliminated a German-made Leopard tank in Ukraine’s Kharkov Region, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday, sharing aerial footage confirming the destruction.
In its report, the ministry stated that the Leopard had been spotted by a reconnaissance UAV and subsequently targeted by several FPV drones.
Video footage shows the tank engulfed in flames after suffering multiple hits from the kamikaze drones.
In addition to the Leopard, Russian forces destroyed two other tanks, an M113 armored personnel carrier, two pickup trucks, five Soviet D30 howitzers, and four US-made M101 and M119 howitzers while repelling a failed Ukrainian counter-attack, in which Kiev lost up to 440 troops, according to Saturday’s update from the Defense Ministry.
Kiev has received dozens of Leopard main battle tanks from its Western allies. The Ukrainian military has been supplied with both the 2A4 and the older 1A5 version, although the latter has only been seen on the frontline on a handful of occasions. It is unclear from the video which variant of the German armor was eliminated.
Leopard 2 tanks have seen extensive action throughout the conflict, particularly last year, when they spearheaded Kiev’s ultimately unsuccessful counteroffensive, and during Ukraine’s stalled incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region this year.
Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov has estimated that Ukraine’s army lost over half a million servicemen in 2024 alone, bringing total losses to more than one million since the escalation of the conflict in 2022. Speaking at a defense board meeting on Monday, the minister also reported that the Russian Armed Forces maintain a strategic initiative across the entire line of contact, with troops advancing by an average of 30 square kilometers daily.