Ukraine Takes Out Russian Howitzer With Extreme Precision – Video footage of Ukrainian and Russian strikes on enemy positions has been commonplace over the last year, but in just the last few weeks, some of the most impressive clips have emerged online showing how Ukrainian forces are capable of destroying Russian equipment with extreme equipment.
In one clip, said to have been recorded somewhere near Zmiivka in Luhansk Oblast, a Ukrainian artillery strike easily takes out a Russian self-propelled howitzer in one shot.
The dramatic aerial footage, recorded by a Ukrainian drone, identifies two Russian positions on the ground.
Two red arrows point to two howitzers, one just meters away from the other.
After the two arrows identify the vehicles, one of them quickly explodes and becomes engulfed in flames.
Mere meters away, around half a dozen Russian soldiers can be seen fleeing the area and running for their lives.
Later in the clip, the fire can be seen burning through every flammable part of the vehicle.
What’s left of the howitzer is surrounded by black scorch marks, and towards the end of the clip, a second explosion can be seen – although, this second strike was less effective.
While the first fire rages, the second howitzer lies abandoned as an artillery strike lands just a couple of feet away.
The video was shared on Twitter by Ukraine Weapons Tracker, a popular war-tracking account, which noted that the howitzer seen in the video is a 2S19 Msta-S self-propelled howitzer – one of the best ‘big guns’ Russia has in its arsenal.
“#Ukraine: The Ukrainian 92nd Mechanized Brigade destroyed a Russian 2S19 Msta-S self-propelled 152mm howitzer with a precision artillery strike in the vicinity of Zmiivka, #Luhansk Oblast,” the post reads.
Russian Forces Made A Mistake in Ukraine
Russian forces in the area may have made an error by leaving the two vehicles parked in such close proximity.
Some Twitter commenters noted how, in the fact of artillery strikes, Russian forces normally keep vehicles spaced apart as much as possible.
In this instance, the two vehicles were parked close enough to one another that one precise strike could have caused damage to both.
The close proximity also means that two successive strikes are easy to perform relatively quickly, as seen in this particular video.
Little in the way of additional details was provided about the location of the strike, or whether the second vehicle was eventually recovered by Russian forces in the Zmiivka region of Luhansk Oblast.
You can watch the full video here.
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Jack Buckby is 19FortyFive’s Breaking News Editor. He is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
