Ukraine has shared footage of its forces taking out a new Russian PREDEL-E coastal radar system in the country’s contested Kherson region, where Kyiv’s forces have been pushing back at Moscow’s troops for nearly three months.
Ukraine destroyed Russia’s “sophisticated” PREDEL-E mobile over-the-horizon coastal radar station and the electronic warfare system protecting it, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said in a post to social media, adding: “Hunting exotic beasts.”
Open-source intelligence accounts and an influential military blogger have suggested Ukraine’s forces used HIMARS, or High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, in the strike.
Newsweek could not confirm this and has contacted the Ukrainian Defense Ministry for comment.
Russia was using the system to track Ukraine’s land and sea movements, Kyiv’s southern grouping of forces said in a post to social media on Monday. Ukraine’s southern fighters shared the same video, showing the strikes on the equipment, followed by billowing smoke and the burnt-out shell of what appears to be the PREDEL-E radar station.
Despite the PREDEL-E and the Leer-2 electronic warfare system shielding the radar, “nothing can be hidden from us on our land,” the southern grouping of forces added. “Already in August, our soldiers completely destroyed the unique development worth US $200 million,” the military said in a Telegram post.
Newsweek cannot independently verify when and where this footage was recorded, and has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.
The Kremlin annexed the southern Ukrainian Kherson region, along with Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk, although this is not internationally recognized, and Ukraine has vowed to reclaim full control of these territories.
On Tuesday morning, Ukraine’s General Staff said Russia had launched aviation strikes on settlements in Kherson, and shelled several towns with artillery over the previous 24 hours. The previous day, Russia’s Defense Ministry had said it had killed up to 35 Ukrainian troops along the line of fighting in Kherson, as well as taking out three vehicles and two howitzers.
Newsweek cannot independently verify battlefield reports.
Ukraine’s counteroffensive, launched in early June, has slowly peeled back territory occupied by Russia in southern and eastern Ukraine, with particularly heavy fighting along the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia front lines.
On Monday, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Maliar, said Russian forces were “still trying to advance in several directions,” including near the decimated Donetsk city of Bakhmut which has seen some of the fiercest clashes of the war, and was claimed by Moscow in mid-May.
“Heavy fighting is ongoing everywhere,” Maliar said, adding Russia was “on the defensive” across southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
Moscow continued to use up “relatively elite Russian airborne forces” by pitting these troops against Ukraine’s counteroffensive and defending “vulnerable positions,” the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank said in its latest assessment.
