Russia has yet to take out any of the Western rocket artillery donated to Ukraine, according to the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley. This comes as Russia claims that they had hit HIMARS near the front line.
“To date the HIMARS that we have provided them – and we’re not the only country by the way, other countries are providing long range fires as well, Britain, for example, and some others are donating long range rocket artillery – to date those systems have not been eliminated by the Russians,” he said after the fourth meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on Wednesday, a platform which includes 50 countries from all continents.
Milley went on to detail how Ukraine was putting the donated rocket systems to use.
“The Ukrainians are effectively employing these HIMARS strikes against Russian command and control nodes, their logistical networks, their field artillery and air to find sites and many other targets,” Milley told journalists in DC. “The Ukrainians have excellent artillery soldiers, excellent gunners as the British would call them and they’re being very, very effective.”
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov acknowledged the praise that Ukraine has received from the US and other allies on its use of the donated multiple launch rocket systems, such as the HIMARS.
“I would like to note that the American partners and as well as colleagues from other countries expressed their admiration for the skill of our soldiers, including the way they use artillery and HIMARS,” Reznikov said.
The minister said these Western donated weapons were “already affecting the course of the war.”
In his review of the meeting, Reznikov also said the Ukraine Defense Contact Group had been presented with an overview of the situation in the battlefield, which, he claimed, showed Russia had suffered significant losses in terms of manpower and equipment.
“These are impressive numbers which prove that Ukraine is indeed the shield of Europe,” he said. “It is important that this overview was prepared specifically by the partners based on their data and evaluations.”
