The Ukrainian military launched an overnight attack on the Russian-held city of Makiivka, showing it can still attack targets deep behind Russian lines while its forces fight in bitter trench warfare in a counteroffensive to retake land.
Both Ukrainian and Russian officials said Tuesday night’s attack in Makiivka was significant, but disagreed on whether it hit a military or civilian area. And the attack had a symbolic resonance, as Ukraine rejected a deal with Russia in Makiivka in January one of the greatest losses of human life in a single blow since the invasion of Moscow almost 18 months ago.
Video released online by the Ukrainian military showed a huge fireball lighting up the night sky over Makiivka in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. The military said it had “ceased to exist” in the city thanks to Ukrainian forces, while Russia’s state news agency Tass reported that one man had been killed and 68 civilians injured. None of the claims could be independently verified.
The strike came four weeks after the start of Ukraine slow but intense campaign against Russian forces dug in to the south and east Miles of trenches and minefields over exposed open fields. Since the start of the counteroffensive, Ukrainian forces have made small advances, and on Wednesday General Oleksiy Hromov, deputy commander for operations at the military general staff, gave some details on their progress.
He said Ukraine recaptured it nine settlements last month, mostly small farming villages, and about 62 square miles. He also said the “hot contact line” where Ukraine directly came into conflict with Russian troops was about 745 miles long.
The numbers could not be independently verified, but they appeared consistent with previous New York Times reports – and with the fierce, yard-by-yard nature of the fighting, as described by Ukrainian soldiers and civilians. Russian officials said Ukraine’s campaign would be dismissed.
For months, while Ukraine prepared and launched its counter-offensive and previously attacked Russia – graduation on many fronts and Capture only the eastern city of Bakhmut – both sides engaged in long-range attacks on targets far from the front line.
While Ukraine has used western-supplied weapons like the HIMARS missiles to attack Russian supply lines and weapons depots, Russia has frequently targeted civilian centers, bombing Ukraine’s capital Kiev 17 times in May alone.
Though many of Russia’s missiles and drones are shot down by Ukraine’s air defense systems, the attacks have made many Ukrainians in Kiev unnerved and ready to rush to air raid shelters. Nerves ran high again on Wednesday after a man detonated an explosive device at a courthouse in the city, sparking a standoff that ended in his death and two officers injured. Authorities did not identify the man, and his case did not appear to be related to the war.
During Tuesday night’s attack on Makiivka, video geolocated by the Times confirmed an explosion on the outskirts of town: A first blast set off several secondary blasts and flares before a much larger blast set off, suggesting the site was a weapons depot could.
Russia’s Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to Ukraine’s claims of the attack, but pro-Russian officials in Makiivka accused Ukraine of using western-supplied long-range missiles and artillery to target civilians. mug quoted a local official, Igor Kimakovsky, as saying HIMARS missiles and artillery hit “peaceful” areas of the city. Nor have these claims been independently verified.
It was a HIMARS attack that killed at least 63 Russian soldiers – and possibly hundreds more – at a barracks in Makiivka on New Year’s Day. The attack pulled Criticism of the Russian military by some influential supporters of Moscow’s war effort, leading the Russian Defense Ministry to claim that this had happened retaliatory strikes to Ukraine.
At the time, the Russian authorities accused their troops in Makiivka of revealing their location use of cell phonesthe data enabled an attack by Ukrainian forces armed with long-range weapons from Western allies.
Makiivka is near the Russian-held city of Donetsk, just about 10 miles from Ukrainian-held Avdiivka to the north-west – well within the approximately 50 mile range of the HIMARS missiles that the United States sent to Ukraine. According to military analysts, the HIMARS system is most effective against stationary targets that can be identified and located in advance, such as ammunition depots, infrastructure and troop concentrations.
Anatoly Kurmanayev And Malachy Browne contributed to the reporting.
