Thanks to its powerful diesel engine and independent suspension on each wheel, the Patria 6×6 can traverse rough terrain, cross water obstacles, and travel at high speeds on highways.
On roads, the vehicle can reach speeds of up to 100 km/h, with a range of up to 700 kilometers on a single tank of fuel.
The armor of the Patria 6×6 meets international STANAG 4569 standards, providing protection for the crew against small arms fire, artillery shell fragments, and mine blasts.
These vehicles are life savers for Ukrainian fighters. For one, moving logistics and personnel in a procedural way to the front even under normal conditions is dangerous, armored vehicles like this allow people making it happen to have some degree of basic comfort that they won't be immediately killed by a mine or drone.
Second, and this is important, if an offensive like Russia is conducting right now, the idea (...at least in classic maneuver warfare which Russia seems to have abandoned by throwing away all their armor and artillery..?) is to find a weak point in the Ukrainian defense and then pour an overwhelming amount of troops into that weak point to create a breakthrough that snowballs.
This is a basic strategy of war that has been used since before machine guns, tanks... whatever..
The counter to this is for the defending Ukrainians to quickly react to the breach in their front lines and move decisive amounts of troops in from either side to contact the assaulting Russian troops, contain the breakthrough and slow down the penetrating arm of the enemies attack.
The thing is... the Russians know that this is of course the natural counter, and so traditionally as part of an armored assault a heavy amount of artillery would be used on either side of the breach to keep defending Ukrainian forces from rushing out of their positions to aid adjacent Ukrainian defenders being overrun. Drones also work in this role, quite decisively it is true but they can't rival the pure volume that artillery provides in being able to deny and suppress entire areas.
Putting aside that Russia can't keep its artillery alive and has almost entirely demechanized at scale as an army for a moment.... that is where armored personel carriers and armored fighting vehicles come in, they allow Ukrainian defenders to mount up onto an armored platform that is very resistant to artillery, drone attacks and small arms fire and rush at highway speeds to positions that they can decisively impede a Russian breakthrough from. Crucially, even with bad intelligence, fog of war and quickly evolving battlefield conditions even if the responding Ukrainian force drives RIGHT into the assaulting Russians, they will be protected by the armor of the vehicle and thus have a chance to respond, dismount and establish positions.
This isn't a trivial difference, trucks work great for blitz warfare and quick reaction like this (which is why they radically transformed warfare when they began to be used for it) but the problem is you can never really know what hill you should stop the trucks behind, dismount everybody and prepare for battle. Too early and your forces are stranded on foot in the middle of nowhere unable to affect the battle and stop the Russian breakthrough, too late and you lose everybody in a single machine gun burst.
I am glad Ukraine is being supplied with Patrias, these are an essential life saving tool for the Ukrainian military right now.
A lot of people have become "Drone Brained" where they think that because FPV drones are effective tactically at taking out armor means armored fighting vehicles and personel carriers must be obsolete. I would remind those people to consider the fact that like with your 9-5 job, you also have to commute to war... and how are you going to do that? Wait how about the drone operators trying to kill you? How do they commute to war? Well, for Russia the answer is with whatever unarmored piece of shit vehicle they can get their hands on if they are even lucky enough to have access to one.
The thing about war is, nobody ever gives you a precise address of where to park so you can be right next to where you are going to be doing war but not have your car right out in the action exposed the whole time. War happens this way, you are driving your car to war which you still have a bit of a commute too... and then war happens to you out of nowhere without warning.
It is not weapon systems that win wars, it is not even really people, it is the impact the movement of those weapon systems and people have and the direct implications to a power balance those movements interface with that determines the trajectory of wars. Giving Ukraine the ability to move its weapon systems and people makes Ukraine that much more powerful even if those armored vehicles never see direct combat or fire their main weapons (which they definitely will).
Russia now has to assume even if they make a major breakthrough that they are then going to have to figure out a way to stop a wave of Patria's from activating from all over the defensive backline of Ukraine's defenses and rushing in to smash the assaulting Russian forces who just got done breaking through the frontlines. spoiler alert they won't...