HIMARS Strike All Day: Ukrainian Forces Decimate Russian Army Columns

An entire 90,000-strong group was stopped.

In May of this year, Russia concentrated a 90,000-strong group of troops along the Ukrainian border. The group was supposed to be thrown into a new big offensive, but the US decision at the end of the month to allow Ukraine to use American weapons to attack military targets on Russian territory disrupted the enemy’s plans.

First Deputy Head of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine Ivan Havrylyuk spoke about this in a conversation with AP.

The agency also cites the words of a Ukrainian military officer with the call sign “Hephaestus”, who said that after receiving permission from Washington, the HIMARS installations had been striking for the whole day, as a result of which enemy forces suffered heavy losses, and their offensive was thwarted.

According to the fighters, in the first days the Ukrainian Defense Forces managed to batter entire columns of Russian troops waiting at the border for an order to invade.

Previously, the Ukrainian Armed Forces could not hit such targets; it was quite difficult. All warehouses with ammunition and other resources were located at a distance of 20 kilometers beyond where the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ weapons could reach. But after Washington gave the green light to use American weapons, the dynamics almost immediately changed, allowing the Defense Forces to stabilize the front and even carry out counterattacks, pushing the enemy several kilometers back.

The military says that tactics have changed due to the improvement in the strike capabilities of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Previously, Ukrainian forces could only defeat incoming infantry attacks, but now it is possible to use more artillery against Russian gun emplacements.

At the same time, the commanders add: without permission to use long-range ATACMS missiles against targets in the Russian Federation, their capabilities are still limited. With the help of ATACMS missiles, the Ukrainian Armed Forces could target enemy command posts that are located 100-150 kilometers from the front line.

“With the help of these (missiles - ed.) we can do a lot to destroy their command centers,” Hephaestus noted.