Vladimir Putin in disarray as Ukraine unleashes new weapon on Russia with massive strike
HIMARS were widely credited with pinning Russia back in the first few months of the war as Putin tried to land a knockout blow against Kyiv.
Ukraine has unleashed US-manufactured HIMARS missiles in Russia for the first time, sources inside Vladimir Putin’s country have claimed.
In what would be a highly significant development, Kremlin puppet Evgeniy Poddubny posted on Telegram: “The enemy has begun using Western-made weapon systems to attack ‘old’ Russian territory. These are fragments of M142 HIMARS MLRS shells.”
Poddubny - who is himself subject to Western sanctions shared a slideshow of several photos to illustrate his claims.
He added: “The Russian Army’s air defence crews destroyed more than 10 missiles in the sky over the Belgorod region. The combat use of this type of weapon is not possible without Western military specialists."
Ukraine has not commented on Poddubny’s claims but the US last week gave President Volodymyr Zelensky’s armed forces the green light to fire US-built weapons at targets inside Russia near the border with the Kharkiv region, in eastern Ukraine.
Washington had previously stalled on doing so as a result of concerns the strikes would simply escalate the conflict.
However, amid reports Russia had massed more than 500,000 troops along the border, convinced US President Joe Biden it was necessary to strike back as a means of self-defence.
US permission only covers the area just north of the border and only permits Ukraine to launch HIMARS at targets in Russia, as opposed to longer-range missiles.
In Russia, six people were injured in shelling in the city of Shebekino in the Belgorod region which borders Ukraine, regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said yesterday.
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He also said, without providing details, that a local official, the deputy head of the Korochansky district, had been killed by “detonation of ammunition."
In the neighbouring Kursk region, three people were injured when an explosive device was dropped from a drone, according to acting regional head Alexey Smirnov.
Russian state-controlled news agency Tass today claimed the Chechen Akhmat battalion had been deployed to Belgorod Oblast for the creation of a “buffer zone”.
HIMARS - which stands for High Mobility Artillery Rocket System - was credited with being instrumental in helping Ukraine push Russia back in the early phase of the war which followed Putin’s invasion of February 2022.
In February of this year, a blogger on Telegram’s Spy Dossier channel claimed a HIMARS strike had killed 65 Russian troops at a training facility in the Donetsk region.
The post explained: "This facility provided training for military personnel of the 39th Separate Guards Motorised Rifle Brigade (military unit 35390, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk).
"The rocket attack came at a time when military personnel were forming up at the training ground.
"The strike was carried out by three HIMARS MLRS missiles.”
