Another big failure for Russia in its invasion of Ukraine: Ukraine’s army shared a video on Wednesday showing the destruction of a valuable Russian radio jammer hidden among farm buildings in Kharkiv.
The video, posted to the Facebook page – see below – for a branch of the Ukrainian military, showed an aerial view of rural buildings, annotated to point out Russian equipment hidden there.
What appeared to be an antenna could be viewed sticking out. There were at least six vehicles, described by Ukraine as armored fighting vehicles, guarding it.
A few seconds in, the video cuts to footage of plumes of smoke and flame coming from the same spot. The footage doesn’t show the moment of the strike, or give an detail about the weapons used.
Ukraine said the equipment it destroyed was a R-330Zh, also known as the “Zhitel,” which “is designed for automated detection, direction-finding and analysis of radio signals,” according to the Ukrainian army statement.
The Zhitel is key to Russian electronic warfare, according to the website Army Technology, which wrote that it also works to jam satellite communications with a range of 20-30km and cellular signals up to 50km away.
The attack was a joint operation between Ukrainian ground and air forces, the army’s post said.
The army’s statement did not identify when or where the strike took place, but open-source intelligence enthusiasts on social media geolocated it to a tiny settlement outside Izyum, a city 120 km southeast of Kharkiv.
Google Maps imagery dated to 2022, at the site they identified, showed the same building footprint as well as the same distinctive blue-and-white striped rooftop as appears in the video. The two are compared in the image above.
Ukraine said on May 14 that Russian troops were withdrawing from the Kharkiv region.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, agreed in a May 13 report that Ukraine “appears to have won the Battle of Kharkiv.”
It said that Russian ground troops were still attempting to hold onto various areas, including Izyum.
Mia Jankowicz is a news reporter at Insider’s London office.