Claiming What Is Theirs

"The occupiers have already felt what modern artillery is like, and their rear will not be safe anywhere on our land that they have occupied." 

"They have felt that the operations of our intelligence officers for defending their homeland are of an order of magnitude greater than any of their special operations."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskii

 

"[In eastern Luhansk], fighting continues near the villages [on the administrative border with neighbouring Donetsk]".

"The Russian army burns down everything in its way. The artillery barrage doesn’t stop and sometimes continues for four to six hours on end."

Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai

Image taken from social media of a Ukraine-launched HIMARS hitting a Russian ammunition supply depot in Nova Khakovka. Photo by Twitter/Denys Kazanskiy

Reports reached the world press that the Ukrainian military on Tuesday had announced the destruction of a Russian ammunition depot in Russian-occupied Nova Kakhovka, located some 55 kilometres east of the port city of Kherson on the Black Sea, also occupied by Russian forces, in southern Ukraine. The resulting explosion was seen in a capture on social media. The strike was precise, inferring that U.S-supplied multiple-launch High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems was used to hit the area by Ukrainian forces.

Ukraine spoke of its intention most recently that in planning to launch a counteroffensive with the intention of reclaiming its territory in the south, even as Russia relentlessly bombards the Donbas region after treating Luhansk province to similar overwhelming tactics in its concentration on achieving full occupation of both provinces which together comprise the entirety of the Donbas region, Ukraine's industrial heartland, now claimed by ethnic Russian Ukrainian opponents of Kyiv. 

 

 

According to Russian news agency Tass, the monstrous blast in Nova Kakhovka hit a mineral fertilizer storage facility, exploding it to the ground. Also hit, the news agency reported, was a market, hospital and houses, all damaged by the strike. Ingredients in fertilizer, they fail to mention, can be used for explosive ammunition. The Tass claim of wider, civilian damage caused by the pinpoint strike has not been verified independently.

The Associated Press, however, analyzed a satellite photo taken of the effect of the blast and significant damage did appear as a massive crater precisely where a large warehouse structure stood in the city. Ukraine is in possession of eight of the HIMAR systems; a truck-mounted missile launcher with high accuracy, and is awaiting delivery of another four such systems in fulfillment of a U.S. promise.

Russian shelling in the past 24 hours saw 15 civilians killed and 48 wounded, according to Ukraine's presidential office. No fewer than five southeast region cities and towns came under Russian fire. Russian rocket attacks targeted Sloviansk and Toretsk, where a kindergarten was hit. Russia continues to make "small, incremental gains" in Donetsk where heavy fighting saw the governor of the province urge its 350,000 its still remaining residents to remove to safer areas in Ukraine last week.

 

This satellite image from Planet Labs PBC shows the aftermath of a Ukrainian strike on a Russian ammunition depot in Nova Kakhovka, Ukraine, July 12, 2022. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)