Ukraine HIMARS Hits Russian Donetsk Training Base, Causes "Massive Casualties"

Russian forces have repeatedly concentrated at training bases in occupied Donetsk and Luhansk - and just as repeatedly been targeted by Ukrainian HIMARS armed with cluster munitions, causing massive casualties to the assembled troops. JL

Isabel Van Brugen reports in Newsweek:

Ukrainian forces struck a Russian military base in the Donetsk region with a HIMARS, causing "massive casualties." Ukrainian forces have used HIMARS (repeatedly to hit Russian troop concentrated in training areas) in the occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The attack was carried out by "HIMARS cluster munitions during an exercise. Massive casualties. You can make mistakes, but you can't lie. Unteachable."

Ukrainian forces are reported to have struck a Russian military base in the occupied Donetsk region with a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), causing "massive casualties.

 

Graphic videos circulating on social media, which Newsweek could not independently verify and will not share for ethical reasons, purported to show the devastating aftermath of the strike. It's not clear where or when it was filmed.

"A video has appeared online showing the aftermath of an attack, presumably on a training ground near Donetsk," the ASTRA Telegram channel, a project run by independent Russian journalists, said on Tuesday.

 

The channel cited Russian military channel Alex Parker Returns, who said the attack was carried out by "HIMARS cluster munitions during another exercise."

 

"Massive casualties. You can make mistakes, but you can't lie. Unteachable. Alas," the channel said, sharing the 11-second clip.

 

Other Russian Telegram channels said the attack resulted in about 50 Russian casualties.

Ukrainian forces have used the Washington-supplied HIMARS on several occasions throughout the war, including in its Donetsk and Luhansk regions which are largely occupied by Russian forces. The Kremlin has been pushing for the total capture of the two regions—which together comprise the Donbas—since Russia's initial invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014.

HIMARS has allowed Ukraine to destroy Russia's most advanced anti-aircraft missile systems. Washington has supplied the Ukrainians with at least 39 HIMARS since the war began on February 24, 2022.

 

In February, Serhiy Bratchuk, a Ukrainian official in southern Ukraine, said Kyiv's forces attacked a training area for Russian troops close to the Donetsk city of Volnovakha with HIMARS.

He said in a post on his Telegram channel at the time that the strike killed about 65 Russian soldiers near the village of Trudivske, where units of Russia's 39th Separate Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade were stationed.

Citing several anonymous sources, the BBC's Russian service reported that Kyiv's military used two missiles in the strike.

 

Bratchuk published two unverified graphic videos that he said showed the "consequences" of the HIMARS attack.

Another HIMARS attack in the same month on a training ground in the Russian-occupied part of the southern Kherson region reportedly killed at least 60 Russian soldiers.

"Mass liquidation of Russians near Podo-Kalynivka in the Kherson region," said Serhii Sternenko, a Ukrainian activist in a post on X, formerly Twitter, adding that "not everyone survived."