“The nature of the shelling of munitions depot in the Donetsk Oblast indicates that the Russian hybrid troops could have deployed the newest artillery systems 2S35,” a military expert who chose to remain anonymous told the editors of the InformNapalm community. This assumption has not yet been confirmed, but it should be taken into account in the OSINT and HUMINT efforts connected to the current flare-up of hostilities in Donbas.

In the morning of May 25, a series of powerful explosions occurred in Donetsk Oblast. It became known that artillery munitions depot blew up in the zone of responsibility of the 92th Mechanized Infantry Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The incident was reported by the volunteer Roman Donik on his Facebook page.

Then a video was posted on Facebook by the user Ophidian Asp. The video shows an exploding depot near the village of Stara Mykolaivka (formerly Pravdovka).

Pavlo Zhebrivsky, the chairman of the Donetsk Regional Military and Civil Administration said that 20 people had to be evacuated from the village of Stara Mykolaivka.

According to Politeka, Stara Mykolaivka was on the receiving end of ten 152 mm rounds fired by Russian hybrid forces from the Komsomolsky District of the occupied city of Horlivka. The distance is about 23 km.

We asked the experts to evaluate the shelling and they noted that among the artillery systems currently used by the militants only 2S19 Msta-S or 2C3 Akatsiya had the range to deliver the fire. However, these systems are not able to ensure this degree of accuracy and density of hits at the given distance. The high accuracy pattern of the rounds consistently hitting the same spot may indicate that the Russians could have deployed the newest artillery systems 2S35 Koalitsiya-SV to Donbas.

Additional Information:

2S35 Koalitsiya-SV self-propelled howitzer is designed to destroy command posts, communication centers, artillery and mortar batteries, armored combat vehicles, including tanks, anti-tank weapons, air defense and anti-missile systems. The main armament is a 2A88 gun, an automatic 152 mm gun with a firing rate of more than 10 rounds per minute, which exceeds the rate of fire of other artillery systems. The 2S35 has a unified command-and-control system with which all actions are displayed. The system can automatically select the appropriate shell type for a task and the amount of charge required. Koalitsiya can fire guided projectiles, their flight path is controlled through the GLONASS navigation system. High-explosive fragmentation shells can also be used.

At present, we do not have photos or videos confirming or disproving this assumption of the experts about the deployments of the Russian 2C35 Koalitsiya-SV self-propelled howitzer systems in Donbas. However InformNapalm volunteers have already spotted many types of cutting-edge Russian weapons and equipment in the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. The information about them has been structured in the database titles the Russian Aggression.

This publication was prepared specially for InformNapalm.

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(Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0 )

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