On paper maybe. It's difficult to predict how effective these tanks will be in action against Russia's tanks and anti-tank missiles.
Ukrainians have been successful against Soviet era Russia tanks just using their own Soviet era tanks, plus using the ones they captured from the Russians. They will have more success with the Leopard 2.
I'm not an expert on tanks but I know it usually requires months if not years of training for operators to be competent in combat with modern tanks. So it won't matter much how much better the leopard tanks are if Ukrainians don't get adequate training on them.
Learning the Abrams will take a lot of time. I don't know if the Ukrainians should even bother for now. But the Leopard 2 is a very different story. Military experts believe that just a few weeks of training on the Leopard 2 would be enough to make a crew, already familiar with tanks (like the T-72), effective. Not as effective as they would be with more training. But effective enough. More effective than just staying with their old familiar T-72.
And I'm assuming they're getting older Leopard tanks, not the most modern versions but I could be wrong.
Doesn't matter. The Oldest Leopard 2 tanks are superior to anything the Russians have, including their newest T-14 which is so bad, they haven't used in combat. They send in the ancient T-62's instead. The T-14 can't handle a parade, let alone be used in combat.
Combined arms warfare isn't like playing Call of Duty. It takes months, and sometimes years, of training to use certain tanks and artillery machines competently.
The experts say that training on the Leopard 2 won't take nearly as long as training on other tanks, like the Abrams. That is one reason why the much superior Abrams (in many ways) won't be a factor at all this year, or probably the next, if the war goes on that long. But the Leopard 2 is a different story.
I've so far seen no proof that Crimea (which Russians can currently reach by land, sea, or air) is suffering from supply problems. And no, Ukraine's air defenses are not on par with Russia's.
No, it isn't. And it won't, until Ukraine cuts the Crimea Land Bridge and the regular Crimea Bridge to the east. Then it will start to be a big supply problem.
Seems like you're getting ahead of yourself in discussing Crimea while Ukraine continues to lose ground in recent weeks. I know that things can change quickly in war but currently, Russia seems to have gained some momentum. The Russians absolutely could run out of steam again like last year but the mobilized forces in recent weeks appear to be making an impact. It remains to be seen whether or not Ukraine can organize another Kharkiv-like offensive. I wouldn't rule it out.
The labored gains the Russians made in the last few weeks, crawling forward yards per day, are nothing compared to the big gains the Ukrainians had east of Kharkov in September, or in the Kherson region in November. Since mid-summer, when we
finally go them some accurate long range strike ability, with the HIMARS, the overall momentum has been going Ukraine's way.
In any war, the side that is losing can always point to minor gains. German propaganda conceded that the Western allies and the Russians did have their gains, in France, in Belorussia. But the Germans had their successes too. In the Eastern Prussia counterattack. The advances during the Battle of the Bulge. The advances the Germans made against Strasbourg during Operation Nordwind. All these German counterattacks were tiny compared to the advances the Allies made during 1944. And the smallest of these German advances were much much greater than all the advances the Russians have made in the last six months.
