Ukrainian forces reportedly used U.S. weaponry to wipe out a 40-car railway grouping of Russian troops, ammunition, and equipment meant for fighting in the Kherson region in Ukraine.
A “High-precision HIMARS strike destroyed a train of more than 40 cars that arrived from Crimea carrying troops, equipment and ammunition to Kherson region,” Ukrainian internal affairs ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko said Sunday. The strike apparently took place in Brylivka, where publicly available information appears to point to another recent strike by Ukrainians on a Russian ammo storage facility. “Damage to a fuel storage facility (and reportedly an ammunition depot) in Russian-controlled Brylivka, Kherson Oblast is visible in satellite imagery from today,” Brady Africk, who works with a long-running D.C. think tank, shared on Twitter Saturday. Video footage was available ostensibly showing a fire as a result of a Ukrainian strike on the Russian depot there. As for the HIMARS strike, the weaponry used in that affront against the Russians is a multiple launch rocket system and was put to effective use by the Ukrainians in other recent strikes as well.
⚡️ High-precision HIMARS strike destroyed a train of more than 40 cars that arrived from Crimea carrying troops, equipment and ammunition to Kherson region.
The train's cargo will never kill anyone.
Glory to Ukraine!🇺🇦
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) July 31, 2022
“What we’ve seen is the ability of the Ukrainians to use these HIMAR systems to significantly disrupt the ability of the Russians to move forward,” a U.S. defense official recently stated. “If the Russians think they can outlast the Ukrainians, they need to rethink that.” The HIMARS artillery system is “accurate to within two to three meters, two defense officials told CNN,” per that outlet. Thus, fewer rounds are required to take out a target, as previously reported here. The HIMARS system was also used in a recent strike on a Russian ammo depot in Nova Kakhovka, which is also in the Kherson region. Russian journalist Yuri Kotenok, expressing apparent concerns on Putin’s side about the U.S. weaponry in question, said the HIMARS system constitutes “a serious threat. The liberated areas of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, the DPR and the LPR, as well as the territory of Russia, fall under the possible fire of HIMARS.” His mention of so-called liberated areas refers to Ukrainian territory occupied by Russian troops.
One of the many recent, high-profile incidents of devastating violence amid the war between Russia and Ukraine was a strike by Russian troops on the Ukrainian locale of Olenivka, which is currently under the control of Putin-allied separatists. Russian leadership claims Ukraine to be responsible for the strike, but whatever Russian leadership says is obviously automatically the polar opposite of trustworthy. The strike reportedly killed dozens of Ukrainians taken as prisoners of war. Those imprisoned at the site included personnel originally involved in the high-profile stand-off between Russian and Ukrainian troops at the large Azovstal steel plant in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol. “It was a deliberate Russian war crime, a deliberate mass murder of Ukrainian prisoners of war,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said of the Olenivka strike. Ukrainian military leadership accused Russian forces of using the Olenivka strike to attempt a cover-up of the torture and execution of captured Ukrainians.
