WATCH Russian Grad rockets pound Ukrainian positions

The Russian Defense Ministry has released footage of a Grad MLRS crew unleashing a salvo of rockets at Ukrainian firing positions in Zaporozhye Region. Across Zaporozhye and neighboring Kherson, Russian forces reportedly eliminated hundreds of Ukrainian troops and destroyed dozens of vehicles over the last week.

Posted on the ministry’s Telegram feed on Saturday, the footage depicts members of the 50th Guards Self-Propelled Artillery Regiment preparing, then firing, a BM-21 Grad multiple launch rocket system. Drone footage then shows the 122mm projectiles raining down on a treeline where “firing positions and targets of Ukrainian nationalists” had been identified.

Russian forces advanced all along the Donbass frontline over the last week, seizing the villages of Pervomayskoe, Novomikhailovka and Bogdanovka – the latter of which is located a kilometer from the key strategic town of Chasov Yar – in Donetsk People’s Republic. 

Further south in the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, the Russian military wiped out 360 Ukrainian troops, 30 motor vehicles, and 20 field artillery guns, including eight US-made M777 howitzers since last Saturday, the ministry said in a statement. 

Across the entire theater of operations, Ukraine lost a total of 8,280 soldiers over the past seven days, according to the ministry’s data.