Ukrainian forces took out yet another Russian general in a massive counterattack in Kherson, local authorities said Tuesday.
A general and five Russian military officers were killed in a Ukrainian strike on Russian headquarters using the U.S.-supplied M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARs), according to Serhiy Bratchuk, a representative of the Odesa regional military administration.
“After a strike by HIMARS on the headquarters in the Kherson region, Major General [Artyom] Nasbulin, the head of the 22nd Army Corps of the Russian Armed Forces (military unit 73954, Simferopol), was killed. Colonel Kens, whose death we announced yesterday, died there as well. And apart from him, the commander of the 20th motorized rifle division (military unit 22220, Volgograd) Colonel Andrei Gorobyets, the head of the operational department of the headquarters of the 20th MRD, Colonel Koval, the head of artillery of the 20th MRD, Colonel Gordeev. In total more than 150 died, including 5 officers,” Bratchuk said in a statement posted on Telegram.
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Russian-installed authorities in the occupied Nova Kakhovka confirmed a Ukrainian strike on the area but made no mention of the Russian general and officers killed, claiming instead that Ukrainian forces had used “American HIMARS” to strike a warehouse storing a chemical compound that caused a massive explosion.
Russia’s RIA Novosti, citing local Kremlin-backed authorities, said at least five people were killed, seven were missing, and up to 80 were injured.
The strike came shortly after Ukrainian authorities announced they were launching a counterattack to push Russian forces out of the occupied Kherson region, pleading with residents to get out of the area.
“It’s clear there will be fighting, there will be artillery shelling... and we therefore urge (people) to evacuate urgently, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said on national television on Sunday.
Ukraine lost control of most of the Kherson region following Vladimir Putin’s Feb. 24 invasion, and Russia was quick to install its own leaders in the “new administrations” throughout the area, even as Ukrainian partisans made clear they would not surrender the land without a brutal fight.
In a rare move, Russia’s setbacks in the face of Ukraine acquiring HIMARS were acknowledged even by pro-Kremlin figures.
“Ukrainian missiles and artillery have struck decision-making centers several times. With results. The centers are small but important,” Alexander Sladkov, a correspondent for the state-run Rossia 1, wrote on Telegram on Monday.
Igor Girkin, the former FSB colonel-turned-Russian separatist commander in the early days of the war in the Donbas (who famously implicated Russia in the downing of MH17 on social media), wrote on Telegram that Russia had “suffered large losses” in recent days and “the Russian air defense systems… turned out to be ineffective against massive strikes by HIMARS missiles.”
The devastation wrought against the Russian military in the Kherson strike also appeared to be confirmed in audio released by Ukrainian intelligence on Monday.
In what was described by the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry as an intercepted phone call between Russian troops, one of the men can be heard dropping the bombshell that the “top command” had been wiped out in a Ukrainian strike.
“I think you have already heard about what happened yesterday…. in Kherson?” the purported soldier says.
When his friend responds that he’s not aware of anything big out of Kherson, the soldier notes that it’s not a conversation they should be having “over the phone,” but nonetheless goes on to tell him there are “12 dead” among the “big shot fucking command.”
Kherson is not the only region where the HIMAR systems appear to have proven effective. The Strategic Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Tuesday also said the 106th Guards Airborne Division of the Russian Federation had suffered a devastating blow in occupied Shakhtarsk, in the Donetsk region.
In a statement on Telegram, Strategic Command said all deputy commanders of the division had been killed in a Ukrainian strike, except for one who was left in critical condition.
