Ukrainian forces are using new long-range rocket launchers supplied by Western countries to strike targets far behind Russian lines, the New York Times reported Wednesday. The Times describes a “fireball” that “lit up the sky” over occupied Luhansk on Wednesday morning in what Russian media described as a strike on an aircraft battery. Russian state media reported that similar strikes on ammunition depots near Kherson in southern Ukraine did target civilians, leaving seven dead. Ukraine’s military rejected this claim. According to the Times, Ukrainian forces are carrying out these strikes with “truck-mounted, multiple rocket launchers known as High Mobility Artillery Missile Systems, or HIMARS.” As explained here at The Week, “HIMARS is a lighter, more mobile cousin of [Multiple Launch Rocket System]And it has an effective range of over 180 miles. This is 10 times the range of the M777 shells the US had previously sent to Ukraine. On June 1, a US official confirmed that HIMARS was heading to Kyiv as part of a new $700 million military aid package. If Ukraine can successfully disrupt Russia’s logistics and artillery operations, this could be a game-changer. During the Donbass campaign, Russia relied heavily on its massive artillery advantage to push back Ukrainian forces, firing about 50,000 artillery rounds a day, 10 times more than Ukraine could manage.
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