Ukrainian Troops Recovered One Of Their Damaged Strv 122 Tanks

When Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky visited the Ukrainian army’s 21st Mechanized Brigade at its staging base in the Kupyansk-Lyman area in eastern Ukraine earlier this week, one of the brigade’s 10 ex-Swedish Strv 122 tanks served as a backdrop.

And not just any Strv 122. Look closely at the official photos of Zelensky’s front-line visit and you might notice some distinctive damage to the 69-ton, four-person tank’s side skirts and turret top.

That damage is a dead giveaway that the tank at Zelensky’s visit was the same tank that Russian forces damaged—repeatedly—10 miles west of Svatove in late September. Videos the Russians posted on social media depict explosives-laden drones striking two separate Strv 122s.

In the videos, the tanks appear to be immobilized—likely after striking mines. Stranded and alone after their crews bailed out, the Strv 122s were easy targets as the drones zoomed in.

Russian state media celebrated the attacks. “Russian drones damaged two Swedish Strv 122 tanks east [sic] of Svatove and are trying to destroy them completely,” TASS noted.

Three weeks ago, the Strv 122s’ fates hung in the balance. If the tanks survived the drone onslaughts, Ukrainian engineers might eventually recover them for repair.

That’s exactly what happened with at least one of the damaged Strv 122s. Engineers towed it back to the 21st Brigade’s rear area in time for Zelensky to inspect the tank a week or so later.

It should come as no surprise that the Strv 122 survived. The Swedish tank—an upgrade of the German Leopard 2A5—is one of the best-protected tanks in the world. To transform a Leopard 2A5 into a Strv 122, the Swedes added three sections of additional composite armor on top of the impressive composite armor the German version of the tank already enjoyed.

The add-on armor protects the front of the hull—the “glacis”—as well as the turret face and the top of the turret. When they were producing the Strv 122s back in the mid-1990s, the Swedes surely didn’t anticipate explosives-laden first-person-view drones becoming lethal anti-tank weapons 30 years in the future.

So it was a happy coincidence that the armor the Swedes added to the tanks’ turret tops is perfectly placed to blunt drone strikes. That coincidence is why, instead of burning to the ground on a lonely field outside Svatove, the damaged Strv 122 got to meet the president.

The 21st Brigade surely intends to repair the tank and return it to service. Whether the other damaged Strv 122 survived isn’t yet clear. Regardless, it’s becoming routine for Ukraine’s Leopard 2 and derivative tanks to suffer damage, undergo repair then roll back into battle.