Kyiv blasts weapons, while Moscow loses 44 artillery systems a day

Moscow’s artillery losses in the war-torn nation have mounted, and on Wednesday Kyiv announced that within the previous week, Ukraine has destroyed $25 million worth of Russian equipment across the southern front lines.

In the last week, Ukrainian special operations forces destroyed a BM-21 Grad, a BM-27 Uragan, a TOS multiple rocket launcher, and one of Russia’s highly valued Zoopark counterbattery radar systems in the southern Zaporizhzhia area, according to a statement.

The 20-month conflict in Ukraine has been primarily fought with artillery. According to Frederik Mertens, a strategic analyst at the Hague Center for Security Studies, “firepower, such as multiple rocket launchers, is key. Being able to take out the opposing military with artillery and rocket launchers is even more important than maneuvers.”

On Sunday, Ukraine declared that it had taken down a Zoopark system that was intended to locate and target Kyiv’s artillery installations.
Ukraine’s special operations forces claimed on Wednesday, “Our soldiers found and identified the enemy’s heavy equipment, and adjusted artillery fire on it.” “The [total] estimated value of the burned equipment is about $25 million.”

Spokesman for the Tavria group of forces in Ukraine, Colonel Oleksandr Shtupun, stated on Sunday that the wrecked Zoopark system alone was “valued at over 10 million dollars.”
Before being targeted, Ukrainian drones appear to have recorded the systems functioning in the Russian-annexed area, according to a video released by Kyiv’s special operations forces. Despite having formally declared sovereignty of the southern region in September 2022, Russia does not actually control the entire Zaporizhzhia region. Since early June, Zaporizhzhia, along with the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine, has been the center of Ukrainian counteroffensive attempts.

The Ukrainian military’s General Staff said in a second statement on Wednesday that 44 Russian artillery systems had been destroyed by its forces in the previous day. Since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has now destroyed 7,125 artillery systems, according to a report by Kyiv. The General Staff also stated that throughout the preceding day, Russian forces used artillery fire to bombard over 100 communities in eastern, southern, and northern Ukraine.

In the 20 months of the conflict, Russia’s Defense Ministry stated on Tuesday that Kyiv’s military had destroyed 1,169 combat vehicles carrying multiple launch rocket systems in addition to 6,865 field artillery guns and mortars.

According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, in the previous day, Russia destroyed two M777 artillery systems operated by Ukraine, two Msta-B and D-20 howitzers that were towed, and a lightweight M119 howitzer that was located across the frontlines in Zaporizhzhia.