Ukrainian rockets devastate Russian artillery depots ahead of major counteroffensive
Western-supplied rockets are enabling Ukraine to bomb Russian munitions magazines deep behind the line of contact, undermining a key Russian advantage in firepower
Ukraine destroyed a series of Russian ordnance depots in the 20th week of the war, demonstrating the high effectiveness of US-supplied HIMARS rocket systems and other Western systems, and worrying Russian military observers.
The targetings appear to be part of preparations for a summer counteroffensive in the southern Kherson and Zaporizhia districts, which border on the Crimea.
Ukraine said it destroyed a major Russian command post in Kherson district along with a weapons arsenal, killing 12 Russian soliders on July 10. Its armed forces posted drone footage of a depot in flames.
Two days later, Ukraine said it had struck another Russian ammunition depot in Nova Kakhovka, also in Kherson oblast, this time killing 52 soldiers.
Russia’s official Tass news agency said only civilian infrastructure was hit the second time and seven people were killed, but Russian military bloggers have been reporting with concern Ukraine’s recent high effectiveness against Russian rear depots and have repeatedly posted video of detonating munitions.
One, who goes by the name Military Informer, speaks of “daily combined attacks on Russian bases and warehouses using GMLRS and Point-U missiles to a depth of 80-120km. The Russian army has not solved the existing problem with the enemy’s long-range weapons,” he said.
The Kremlin has reportedly encouraged Russian military journalists to leave out operational details, and Russian president Vladimir Putin met with a group of them on June 17 to try to defuse tension.
Britain has supplied Ukraine with its M270 Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) and the US has supplied it with its High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS). Both are highly accurate multiple launch rocket systems.
Ukraine’s armed forces have reported other similar successes against Russian ordnance depots, including on the eastern front, where panic among Russian forces may have made targetings easier. Ukrainian forces say they struck a hastily assembled Russian storage of fuel, lubricants and ammunition in the Azotny district of Donetsk oblast. “Everything was done in a hurry,” a Ukrainian post on Telegram said, “and so senselessly, that it did not stray away from the ‘watchful eye’.”
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed that Western-supplied weapons are key to such strikes.
“The weapons we received from our partners started working very powerfully,” Zelenskyy said on July 8. “Their accuracy is exactly as needed. Our defenders inflict very noticeable strikes on depots and other spots that are important for the logistics of the occupiers. And this significantly reduces the offensive potential of the Russian army,” he said.
Ukraine has received eight HIMARS systems so far. The US has announced it will send four more as part of a new, $400mn instalment of weapons to Ukraine. Russia has previously said it destroyed HIMARS launchers, but a US defence official denied that.
Russia’s ability to concentrate firepower has been key to its ability to claw away territory in the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk.
“Russia has achieved fires dominance through the sheer volume of tactical artillery and munitions that it can bring to bear,” wrote the Royal United Services Institute, a leading military think tank, in a recent special report researched on Ukraine’s frontlines.
“Russia is firing approximately 20,000 152mm shells per day compared with Ukraine’s 6,000, with an even greater proportional disparity in multiple rocket launchers and missiles fired,” says the RUSI report. “The fastest way to level the playing field is to enable Ukraine to strike Russian artillery logistics.”
Russia unwittingly helped Ukraine do so in April, says RUSI, when civilian contractors were brought in to move ammunition from railheads to the divisional rear, “with military units then shifting ammunition to large ammunition depots behind the main artillery concentrations.” This system, the report says, “makes key bottlenecks in Russian artillery highly predictable”.
These successes have fuelled Ukrainian rhetoric in recent weeks. Ukraine’s defence minister Oleksyi Reznikov was the latest official to rule out a negotiated end to the war on July 9, saying Russia will either break up, give up, or be defeated.
In a related development, Ukraine’s ministry of digital transformation started training private drone operators in flying and cloaking skills. Some operators have donated their own equipment to this Army of Drones. Both sides use drones to target enemy artillery.
US national security advisor Jake Sullivan said Russia is also making preparations in this direction. “Our information indicates that the Iranian government is preparing to provide Russia with up to several hundred UAVs, including weapons-capable UAVs, on an expedited timeline,” Sullivan said.
A summer counteroffensive
The destruction of Russian ammunition appears to be part of a larger plan for a southern counteroffensive.
Ukrainian deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk told civilians on July 10 to evacuate the occupied oblasts of Kherson and Zaporizhia “by all means possible so that the armed forces can liberate these territories without endangering the civilian population.” It was her third such warning since June 20.
Ukrainian forces conducted a bombing of Kherson airport on July 5, crippling a likely Russian logistics lifeline.
Sabotage efforts in the occupied south have also stepped up. The Ukrainian Resistance Centre says partisans in Kherson blew up a railway bridge between Novobohdanivka and Troitske on July 7, hampering Russian logistical efforts. Partisans had also blown up a railway bridge on July 3 and derailed a Russian munitions train on July 2. Assassinations and attempted assassinations of occupation officials in Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts have also ramped up in July.
Britian will train 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers over the next few months, Ukraine reported – a high number suggesting that Ukraine may be keeping large forces in reserve for its counteroffensive.
Motivating manpower has been a Russian weakness. The administration of Russian-occupied Luhansk oblast said Russian forces are forcibly conscripting men by issuing them summonses after they are called in to work.
Ukrainian intelligence said Russia is now offering convicts, including murderers, amnesty after six months of army service in Ukraine. Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Misinformation said Russia is advertising 22,200 vacancies for contract servicemen.
An ongoing investigation by the BBC Russian service and Mediazona revealed that 17% of Russian deaths are officers – a high proportion that could impact on Russia’s command capability on the ground.
Despite these setbacks, Putin delivered a hawkish speech to the Duma in July, in which he said he is willing to fight Ukraine to the bitter end if necessary.
“Today we hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield. What can you say? Let them try,” Putin said. “We have heard many times that the West wants to fight us to the last Ukrainian. This is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but it seems that everything is heading towards this,” he said.
Putin’s suggestion that it is the West pitchforking Ukraine into fighting is misleading. A recent poll suggested that 93% of Ukrainians believe in a military victory. It is their Western allies who are divided about the advisability of such a course.
Timeline: Week 20 of Russia’s war in Ukraine
July 6
For the first time since the start of the war, Russia claims no territorial advances and Ukraine reports none, suggesting that Russian forces may be taking an operational pause, says the Institute for the Study of War.
Russian forces are trying to establish control of the Lysychansk-Bakhmut highway in Donetsk oblast, a crucial logistics path that would enable them to move offensive equipment west.
Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai says Ukraine still hasn’t surrendered its eastern Luhansk province as fighting continues in smaller settlements, though Russian forces are advancing.
Britian’s defence ministry says Russian forces have gained 5km in their advance towards Slovyansk on the E40 highway over the past week “in the face of extremely determined Ukrainian resistance”, and are approximately 16km north of the city. It sees as the battle for Slovyansk as the likely next hotspot of the war in the east.
In the south, Russian forces shell Ukrainian positions but appear not to win back any of the ground lost to counter-offensives.
Ukraine’s air force says it shot down two Kaliber cruise missiles in the Mykolaiv region fired from a submarine in the Black Sea. Odesa city council says Ukrainian forces shoot down an X-31 missile launched in the Black Sea.
July 7
Ukraine’s general staff say their forces repel a ground assault on Bogorodychne, a settlement on the frontline in Donetsk oblast, and other frontline settlements further south near Bakhmut. They say Russian forces have still not entirely established control of Luhansk oblast, which Russian forces proclaimed conquered on July 3. Deputy defence minister Hanna Malyar confirms this.
Ukraine’s southern commands says Russian forces launch 12 Kalibr high-precision missiles at Mykolaiv and Ochakiv. Ukrainian jets engage a Russian SU-35 as it releases a missile against Odesa, forcing it to withdraw and destroying the missile.
Ukrainian special forces say they approach Snake Island, which Russian forces recently evacuated, establish a safe passage for naval ships, take stock of the destroyed or abandoned Russian equipment there, raise Ukrainian flags and depart. Too late, Russian ships launch missiles that strike the island pier. Ukraine’s southern command says its forces found 30 pieces of destroyed Russian equipment and abandoned ammunition. The Russian defence ministry version is that its rockets killed several members of the landing party.
Russian forces fire missiles into the centre of Kramatorsk in the heart of Donetsk oblast, causing casualties, reports the city council.
July 8
Ukraine’s general staff say Russian forces in Donetsk oblast attempt a storming of Bogorodichne, near Slovyansk, and are repulsed after suffering significant losses. Russian forces are also twice pushed back from Dementievka, a settlement in the northern Kharkiv region, where they are increasingly active. Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai says advancing Russian forces shell villages indiscriminately, causing civilian casualties.
Russian Su-30 again launch a cruise missile at the Odesa coast from the Black Sea.
European High Commissioner Josep Borrell says Russia’s war in Ukraine is “dramatically aggravating the food crisis” and has made approximately 50 million people “seriously food insecure”.
“In just two years, the number of seriously food insecure people in the world had already doubled from 135million before the Covid-19 pandemic to 276 million in early 2022, and [it is] 323 million today,” Borrell is reported to say. A total of 1.2 billion people is “severely exposed to the combination of rising food prices, rising energy prices, and tightening financial conditions,” he says.
Borrell says the European Union will donate 7bn euros over two years to support financially vulnerable nations, raise its own crop production and exports, and help Ukraine export its blockaded grains through Solidarity Lanes across Europe.
The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights publishes her report on Russian war crimes in Ukraine. Dunja Mijatović says the Russian invasion resulted in “serious and massive violations… of virtually all human rights”.
“The Commissioner received compelling evidence of systematic violations of the right to life by Russian forces, including arbitrary killings and enforced disappearances; violations of property rights, including widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure; cases of torture and ill-treatment, gender-based violence and war-related sexual violence; violations of the right to liberty and security of person, including abductions, arbitrary detention and incommunicado detention,” the report says.
Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov walks out of a meeting of the G20 in Bali, Indonesia, after what he called “frenzied criticism” of Russia from Western members of the group of the world’s 20 largest economies.
July 9
Serhiy Haidai, governor of Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk oblast, which was overrun in early July, says Russian forces are attempting to move forward into neighbouring Donetsk oblast across the entire border, from Kremenyuk to Popasna.
Ukraine’s general staff say Russian forces shell Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, the twin cities in the heart of Donetsk oblast that are deemed to form the Russians’ ultimate goal.
The head of Donetsk oblast, Pavlo Kyrylenko, says Russian forces shell civilian infrastructure and housing along the entire length of the frontline in the Donbas.
July 10
Russian rocket attacks in Kharkiv district destroy a school, and in Chasovoy Yar they level a high-rise building, reportedly killing six and burying dozens of people in rubble. An Iskander missile lands in the city of Kharkiv.
Ukraine protests against the return to Germany of a turbine that operates on Nordstream 1, after it underwent repairs at Siemens’ Canadian subsidiary. Ukraine’s foreign ministry says this goes against the sanctions regime on Russia. Turbines are used to pressurise gas pipelines and increase their capacity to deliver gas, but Ukraine says NS1 can easily operate at a higher capacity using its existing turbines, or use alternative pipelines crossing Polish and Ukrainian territory.
Ukraine’s agriculture ministry says it can export grains following the ouster from Snake Island of Russian forces and the freeing of the Bystre passage.
July 11
Russian forces continue efforts to move south along the E40 highway from Izyum to Slovyansk in Donetsk oblast.
Russia fires four X-31 missiles at coastal Odesa oblast. There are no reported casualties.
Ukraine reports that Czech Mi-24B attack helicopters have entered active duty.
Putin signs a decree extending fast-track Russian citizenship procedures to all Ukrainians. Previously they had been offered only to citizens of the occupied Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson oblasts. Ukraine calls it “yet another encroachment on Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”. The EU’s High Representative later says that the EU will not recognise Russian passports issued to Ukrainians in occupied territories.
The Nordstream 1 gas pipeline shuts down for a ten-day maintenance. Some European officials fear it will not restart, depriving Europe of the opportunity to fill its gas storage to 85% of capacity before winter. US investmen bankers Goldman Sachs estimate a Russian gas shutoff would cause a 65% spike in European energy prices over winter.
July 12
Russian forces continue small-scale ground assaults in the Slovyansk and Bakhmut areas in Donetsk oblast.
Mikolaiv is subjected to “massive rocket fire”, with two medical facilities and homes destroyed.
The Institute for the Study of War says “Russian forces continue to regroup, rest, refit, and reconstitute; bombard critical areas to set conditions for future ground offensives; and conduct limited probing attacks.”
The UN’s Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights says 5,024 civilians are confirmed killed due to Russia’s invasin of Ukraine.