On the 3rd, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine opened a relay station in the Kupyansk-Liman region in the eastern part of the country.inspectedA Strv 122 tank was present at the scene. It is one of 10 vehicles donated by Sweden to the 21st Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Army.
This is not just any Strv122. If you look closely at the photos of President Zelenskiy’s visit to the front lines published on the official website, you may notice peculiar damage to the sides and top of the turret of the Strv.
The damage is conclusive evidence that the tank pictured is the same tank that Russian forces repeatedly damaged about 10 miles west of Svatove in late September. Video posted by Russia on social media shows two Strv 122s being attacked by a drone loaded with explosives.
The two tanks in the video appear to have stepped on land mines and become stuck. The crew escaped and the Strv 122, left behind, was picked up by a drone and became an easy target.
Russian state media covered the attack with great fanfare. “Russian military drones damaged and are attempting to completely destroy two Swedish-supplied Strv 122 tanks east of Svatove,” TASS reported.
Three weeks ago, Strv 122’s fate was at a crossroads. If the tank survives the onslaught of drone attacks and is not completely destroyed, Ukrainian military engineers may retrieve it for repairs.
That’s exactly what happened to at least one damaged Strv 122. Engineers moved the damaged Strv 122 to the rear of the 21st Brigade in time for President Zelenskiy’s inspection scheduled for approximately a week later.
It’s no surprise that Strv 122 survived the attack. Weighing 69 tons and with a crew of four, the Strv 122 is a modified version of the German Leopard 2A5 tank, one of the most highly defended tanks in the world.To convert the Leopard 2A5 into the Strv 122, Sweden added composite armor to the Leopard 2A5’s already impressive composite armor in three places.Added。
This additional armor protects the front of the hull, known as the “slope”, as well as the front and top of the turret. When the Strv 122 was produced in Sweden in the mid-1990s, it must have never been foreseen that an explosive-laden first-person-view (FPV) drone would become a deadly anti-tank weapon 30 years later.
Fortunately, the armor that Sweden added to the top of the turret was in the perfect position to soften the impact of drone attacks. Thanks to that coincidence, the damaged Strv 122 was able to attend a presidential inspection instead of being burned to the ground in a lonely field on the outskirts of Svatove.
The 21st Brigade will no doubt repair this tank and return it to the front. It is still unclear what happened to the other damaged Strv 122. In any case, it is becoming commonplace for Ukrainian Leopard 2 tanks and their variants to be damaged, repaired, and re-entered into combat.
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2023-10-08 00:34:24
