‘Ceased to Exist’ – Incredible Video Shows Explosive Ukrainian Strike in Russian-Held City

Ukraine’s military has released a video showing a massive explosion in Makiivka in the Donetsk region of Russian occupied Ukraine, after its forces targeted what it said was “another formation of Russian terrorists.”

Shot in two parts, the drone footage initially shows a derelict residential complex in daylight hours. It then switches to night time and a series of small explosions quickly followed by a giant fireball.

"As a result of precision firing by Defence Forces units, another formation of Russian terrorists in the temporarily occupied Makiivka ceased to exist," the strategic communication office of Ukraine's Armed Forces said. 

Hundreds of Russian-army green ammunition boxes were piled haphazardly in the complex’s central courtyard, video showed. Most of the boxes were sized consistent with packing for the Soviet-era 122mm Grad rocket, an inaccurate and widely-used Russian army weapon.

Among the secondary explosions were artillery rockets catching on fire and flying in random directions before detonating, sometimes hundreds of meters from the storage area, Kyiv Post video analysis showed.

Russian occupation authority forces claimed Ukraine had targeted a Makiivka residential area including a hospital and that one person was killed and another 41 injured, including two children. The videos showed no evidence of a hospital. Social media images showed the strike site to be on the outskirts of the city. 

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Portions of Ukraine’s industrial Donbas region along with the coal-mining city Makiivka have been occupied by Russian troops and locally-hired soldiers since 2014. Russian President Vladimir Putin has named total Russian control of Ukraine’s Donbas region a primary Kremlin military objective in Ukraine.

The Russian army in early 2023 kicked off a major offensive against Ukrainian positions across the Donbas territory. The Kremlin assaults gained little ground and suffered heavy losses. Ukrainian defences west of Makiivka, first built in 2014, held firm. 

The center of Ukraine’s heavy industrial sector, the Donbas is now the focus of a Ukrainian counter-offensive launched kicked off on June 8. In late June near the city Horlivka, some 20 km. north of Makiivka, Ukrainian troops advanced several hundred meters eastward, scoring the first Ukrainian military recovery of ground lost to Russia in 2014.