Ukraine has suffered major setbacks in recent weeks, with invading Russian forces using artillery to break down defenses before seizing territory—but analysts say long-awaited Western rocket systems could help turn things around. The US-supplied HIMARS system is believed to have been used for multiple recent strikes deep behind Russian lines in Ukraine's south and east, including one that destroyed a suspected Russian ammunition dump in Nova Kakhovka, in southern Ukraine, CNN reports.
In the last two weeks, "above all things thanks to the weapons that Ukraine received, we were able to destroy approximately two dozen warehouses with weapons and stocks of fuel," Interior Ministry official Vadim Denysenko said Wednesday. Ukraine now has eight of the truck-mounted HIMARS systems and the US has promised to send at least four more, reports the AP. Analysts say the rockets Ukraine is now being supplied with can hit targets up to 50 miles away with a high degree of accuracy, putting command posts and logistics facilities at risk. Phillips O'Brien at St. Andrews University tells CNN that Russian supply depots are "ludicrously easy" to locate.
"The occupiers have already felt what modern artillery is like, and their rear will not be safe anywhere on our land that they have occupied," President Volodymyr Zelensky said after the Nova Kakhovka strike, per the AP. But Russian rockets are continuing to hit Ukrainian targets, including civilian sites with no military significance, the New York Times reports. In one such strike Thursday morning, at least 20 people, including three children, were killed when Russian rockets hit the central Ukraine city of Vinnytsia. Zelensky denounced the attack as an "open act of terrorism." (More Russia-Ukraine war stories.)
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