Ukraine Has Lost Its First Swedish-Made CV90 Fighting Vehicle

The Russian army has knocked out the first Ukrainian CV90 infantry fighting vehicle. A video and photo that circulated online between Thursday and Saturday depict the skirmish that damaged the 37-ton, nine-person IFV with its powerful 40-millimeter autocannon, and the aftermath of that skirmish.

In the video, a team of several CV90s fires on the move as it races along dirt paths adjacent to treelines somewhere west of Russian-occupied Kreminna, where the Russian army has launched a small-scale countercounteroffensive that the Kremlin hopes will spoil the Ukrainian army’s bigger counteroffensive farther south around Bakhmut and along southern Ukraine’s Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson Oblasts.

It apparently is a local counterattack by Ukrainian troops. And it rolls right into a Russian RPG trap. A Russian soldier fires a rocket-propelled grenade at the lead CV90 from just a hundred feet away, striking the side of the CV90’s turret and sparking a fire. The vehicle veers off the road, trailing smoke, as the accompanying IFVs halt behind it. A second RPG scores a near-miss on the second CV90.

The crew and passengers of the damaged CV90 apparently bailed out and the surviving IFVs moved out, leaving behind two percent of the Ukrainian army’s CV90s. A photo from Sunday depicts Russian troops posing with the immobilized CV90.

The Ukrainian army’s unique “Swedish brigade”—the 21st Mechanized Brigade—deployed to northeastern Ukraine this spring with just 50 or so Swedish-made CV90s, as well as 10 Strv 122 tanks, eight Archer howitzers and at least one Bgbv 90 armored recovery vehicle—all also Swedish-made.

It made some sense for commanders in Kyiv to assign the 21st Brigade to the Kreminna sector, even though the sector was not a locus of the coming counteroffensive. Russian forces around Kreminna, including elements of the 90th Guards Tank Division, were poised to attack with their hundreds of tanks and IFVs while most of the rest of the Russian army in Ukraine was shifting to the defensive.

The 21st Mechanized would try to hold the line around Kreminna while sister Ukrainian brigades attacked around Bakhmut and in the south.

It’s been a hard fight. As recently as Friday, the Russians “made advances in certain areas” west of Kreminna, according to the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C. And it should come as no surprise that Ukraine’s Swedish brigade is losing vehicles.

But don’t mistake the forest for the trees. Ukrainian brigades are advancing along several axes in the south and around Bakhmut while Russian brigades are advancing along just one axis—the Kreminna axis. The overall momentum still belongs to Kyiv. And the 21st Brigade still has 98 percent of its CV90s.