Russian and Ukrainian soldiers found themselves in a uniquely different kind of fight on a small part of the front line in Donetsk. Each tried to stop the other from recovering a set of damaged and abandoned Western tanks.
The story was told by David Axe, a Forbes journalist who has followed every step of the war in Ukraine. In the article, he provided much of the background needed to understand the situation.
21st Mechanized Brigade vs. Motorized Rifle Division
The Ukrainian Armed Forces’ 21st Mechanized Brigade and other units operating around Terny have been up against several Russian Motorized Rifle divisions, including the 144th.
Known as the “Swedish Brigade”, the 21st Ukrainian Mechanized Brigade was formed in 2023, trained in Sweden and equipped with material donated by the country, according to Military Land. This equipment included 10 Stridsvagn 122 tanks.
Lost Swedish Strv 122 tanks
On the outskirts of the Terny camps, there were 7 of them, damaged, destroyed or abandoned. These tanks are a Swedish variant of the Leopard 2A5 and some of the best weapons Ukraine has in its arsenal, which is why Kiev wanted them back.
Most of the Strv 122s of the 21st Ukrainian Mechanized Brigade were attacked in a 3.2 km by 3.2 km area of land on the outskirts of Terny.
What do we know about the tanks?
According to the Dutch open-source intelligence group Oryx, who have counted the losses of Russian and Ukrainian equipment using only verifiable images and video evidence, only one of the 69-ton, four-man tanks was destroyed.
Six tanks could be recovered
This means that six of the lost tanks were still functional and could be a valuable resource for both sides, albeit for very different reasons.
Why does each side want the tanks?
David Axe, in his article for Forbes, explained that the “Ukrainians want to get the Strv 122s to send them to Lithuania for repairs,” while the “Russians want to get the Strv 122s to inspect them and perhaps display them as prizes of war.”
Russia tried to recover one
One of the unrecovered Strv 122 tanks was located along the road to Terny, about a kilometer and a half from the city. It was the one that a Russian engineering vehicle crew tried to tow away on March 19, nine days after it was supposedly immobilized by a drone strike.
Things didn’t go well
“The two Russian BREM recovery vehicles – chained nose to tail – winched up the Strv 122 and began dragging it east towards the Russian lines, about a kilometer and a half away,” said Axe. Halfway there, the Ukrainian 12th Azov Brigade spotted them.
Ukraine stopped the Russians
Ukrainian drone operators managed to stop Russia from taking the Strv 122, immobilizing the Russian vehicles that were trying to tow it away. One of the BREM vehicles was damaged, but the other was trapped and probably not damaged.
The Russian vehicles disappeared
After a week, the Strv 122 was still there, but the Russian BREM vehicles had disappeared. “Perhaps the undamaged tank recovered the damaged one and left the Strv 122 behind,” explained Ukrainian war analyst Andrew Perpetua in a Twitter post.
The source of the story
Perpetua was the source of much of Axe’s reporting on the interesting battle to recover Ukraine’s Strv 122 tanks. He pointed out that one of the belligerents had gotten the upper hand in the fight. But that’s not quite clear.
Several vehicles near Terny were recovered
Perpetua created a map of where the Strv 122 and some other vehicles in the region were located. Three of the five Strv 122s included in his mapping were recovered “presumably by Ukraine”, he noted.
The map created by Perpetua
“Map, clockwise from top left: strv122 recovered, strv 122 recovered, Bgbv 120 recovered, strv 122 recovered, bmp-1 still there, strv towed and blown up, cv90 recovered, strv 122 still there,” Perpetua explained.
They couldn’t say who had recovered the vehicles
“I can’t say who recovered any particular vehicle, I can only say that they are no longer there,” Perpetua commented.
Another problem facing Ukraine
If it was Ukrainian forces, it will take time to repair them and send them back into combat, since, according to Axe, the country suffers from a severe shortage of parts for German-designed tanks.
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