The Ukrainian navy launched a brand new video on Sunday, claiming that it reveals the destruction of a battery of Russian anti-air defenses in Southern Ukraine.
The video was first shared by the Ukrainian navy’s Operational Command South formation on its official Fb web page. The video seems to indicate quite a few burnt-out and smoking wreckages, together with one close to the start that resembles a truck of some sort. The submit claimed that the targets had been a battery of S-300 surface-to-air missile programs operated by Russian forces.
“Whereas performing firing missions, our missile and artillery items destroyed a battery of S-300 air protection programs close to Zelenotropynske,” the submit said.
Zelenotropynske is positioned in Ukraine’s Kherson Oblast, one of many southernmost areas within the nation. The area is positioned simply north of the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. It was additionally reported on Sunday by Euromaiden Press that seven “port and trade infrastructure” targets had been struck by S-300 missiles close to Mykolaiv, a port metropolis positioned lower than 200 kilometers north of Zelenotropynske. It’s unknown if the S-300 programs destroyed on Sunday had been chargeable for these strikes, however it’s unlikely given their dated nature.
Host photograph company/RIA Novosti through Getty Picture
The S-300 anti-air missile programs are Soviet-era navy know-how launched roughly 40 years in the past, with a focusing on vary of solely 75 miles. Earlier in July, it was reported that Russian forces had been turning into more and more reliant on such outdated {hardware} as trendy munitions have been depleted by the protracted battle in Ukraine. Six strikes in Mykolaiv had been attributed to S-300 missiles over the primary weekend of July.
Across the identical time, it was reported that Russia was additionally more and more reliant on Kh-32 missiles, which had been initially designed to sink ships. Variations of the Kh-32 missiles had been credited for strikes on a Kremenchuk procuring middle that killed 18 individuals and an Odessa condo advanced that killed 20 in June.
Regardless of the unique intentions of those weapons, with their stockpiles dwindling Russian forces have been pressured to depend on S-300s and Kh-32s to strike land targets. So as to take action, they’ve been outfitted with GPS programs that permit them to be roughly directed at navy targets.
“The Soviet Union constructed up huge shares of munitions for its chosen weapon programs and the S-300 has been changed by a brand new, extra advance [surface-to-air] system. There shall be lots of S-300 missiles within the Russian stock,” a Western intelligence report just lately defined. “It will make sense from the Kremlin’s perspective to retro-fit the S-300s with a GPS functionality and redeploy them in a distinct position. However the issue is that on the finish of the day they continue to be second-rate precision strike weapons and extra harmless individuals will die in consequence.”
