The Ukrainian Army Has Lost Its First Super

Aug 10, 2023

An M-55S purportedly in southern Ukraine.

The Ukrainian army seems to have lost its first ex-Slovenian M-55S tank. A video that circulated online on Thursday depicts one of the super-upgraded T-55 tanks eating a Russian artillery shell.

That the Ukrainians eventually would write off one of their 28 M-55Ss should come as no surprise. The four-crew M-55Ss—ex-Soviet T-55s from the mid-1950s that Israeli and Slovenian firms updated with British L7 105-millimeter guns and modern optics—aren’t really tanks anymore.

Their protection—200 millimeters of steel plus some bricks of reactive armor—is light compared to a more modern tank. These days, an M-55S works best as a mobile gun: a self-propelled direct-fire artillery piece that can lend its firepower to infantry formations but wouldn’t lead a direct assault on stiff enemy defenses.

What is surprising is where the M-55S was when it got hit: reportedly outside Russian-occupied Kreminna in northeastern Ukraine. That’s surprising because the Ukrainian army assigned the M-55Ss to a tank battalion in the 47th Assault Brigade, which since early June has been in the thick of the fighting along one of the main axes of Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive—in southern Ukraine.

In other words, that M-55S that blew up outside Kreminna is more than a hundred miles from where it should be.

Maybe the 47th Brigade chopped its tank battalion to a different brigade before the counteroffensive kicked off on June 4. That could help to explain why this is the first time in weeks we’ve seen any photographic evidence of an M-55S on the front line—and the first time we’ve observed what is definitely an M-55S in combat.

It might also help to explain why the 47th Assault Brigade has partnered with the adjacent 33rd Mechanized Brigade, which owns most of Ukraine’s German-made Leopard 2 tanks.

It’s possible Ukraine’s southern command assessed Russian defenses along the southern front and concluded that the aging M-55Ss simply couldn’t survive—or at least couldn’t make a meaningful contribution as Ukrainian brigades shifted from defense to offense in the south.

The Leopard 2A6 is one of the best-protected tanks in the Russia-Ukraine war—and the 33rd Brigade has lost several of the type in dangerous assaults across Russian minefields. The thinly-armored M-55Ss surely would have fared ever worse than the Leopard 2s have done.

There’s ample precedent for Ukrainian brigades swapping tankers, tanks and even entire tank companies and battalions.

In order to stand up a tank company in the new 82nd Air Assault Brigade—the first and so far only Ukrainian unit with ex-British Challenger 2 tanks—the Ukrainian air assault force sent crews from the veteran the 25th and 80th Air Assault Brigades to the United Kingdom for training, and then assigned those crews and their tanks to the 82nd Brigade.

But if Ukrainian planners were trying to keep the old M-55Ss away from the heaviest fighting, they may have miscalculated. There are hints of intensive fighting to come along the Kreminna sector.

Most notably, the Ukrainian army has begun deploying its unique 21st Mechanized Brigade—which operates ex-Swedish CV90 fighting vehicles and Strv 122 tanks—to the sector, perhaps signaling it intends to attack along a new axis in the seven-week-old counteroffensive. A northeastern axis.

As if there weren’t enough uncertainty surrounding Ukraine’s 28—now 27—old M-55S tanks, there’s another wrinkle. Just a day before the video appeared depicting that Russian strike on one M-55S in northeastern Ukraine, a separate image posted to social media purportedly showing another M-55S in southern Ukraine.

Did the 47th Brigade deploy separate tank companies to different sectors, a hundred miles apart?