A senior US defense official said Ukrainian forces were having a “big success” using an advanced missile system supplied by the United States to target Russian command posts.
The Ukrainians used High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to target the positions of Russian leaders in their battle for the eastern region of the country known as Donbass.
“Because it is such an accurate and longer-range system, the Ukrainians are able to carefully select targets that would undermine Russia’s efforts in a more systematic way than they could with short-range artillery systems,” the official said.
Ukrainian forces are still in the early days of operation of the HIMARS, four of which the United States has already sent to the former Soviet country and another four pledged late last month, that only a few Ukrainian forces can operate after taking a training course.
HIMARS missiles, with a range of about 40 miles, gave the Ukrainians the ability to hit long-range targets with greater accuracy than they had previously been able to with short-range artillery.
“What you see is that the Ukrainians are in fact systematically picking targets, then hitting them with precision, thus presenting this precise method of weakening the Russian capability,” the official said. “I see that they are able to continue to use this throughout the Donbass.”
