Russia Shows Off Its Grad Multiple Launch Rocket Systems

This recently released Russian Ministry of Defense footage appears geared towards showing off the country’s Grad multiple launch rocket systems.

The footage was obtained from the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) on the evening of Wednesday, July 6, along with a short statement claiming that the images show the “combat work of crews of ‘Grad’ multiple launch rocket systems.”

In the footage, a soldier can be seen saying (in Russian): “The costs are huge. Supply vehicles constantly go back and forth with ammunition. We arrive, unload it and leave. Because we supply at least two or three machines a day.”

We have not been able to independently verify the claims or the footage.

The BM-21 Grad was first designed in the 1960s in the Soviet Union.

Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 in what the Kremlin is calling a “special military operation”. July 7 marks the 134th day of the invasion.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported that between February 24 and July 7, Russia had lost about 36,650 personnel, 1,602 tanks, 3,797 armored combat vehicles, 815 artillery units, 247 multiple launch rocket systems, 107 air defense systems, 217 warplanes, 187 helicopters, 667 drones, 155 cruise missiles, 15 warships, 2,665 motor vehicles and fuel tankers, and 66 units of special equipment.

Russian forces are intensifying their attacks in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. Civilians are fleeing Sloviansk as Russian forces push towards the city. This comes after the Donetsk regional governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, urged 350,000 civilians to evacuate the area.

British intelligence has claimed that the battle for Sloviansk will probably be the next key target for Russian forces.

The UK Ministry of Defense said that Russian forces “from the Eastern and Western Groups of Forces are likely now around 16 kilometers north from the town of Sloviansk. With the town also under threat from the Central and Southern Groups of Forces, there is a realistic possibility that the battle for Sloviansk will be the next key contest in the struggle for the Donbas.”

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that heavy weapons from Ukraine’s western allies have finally started working at “full capacity” on the frontlines, with Ukraine’s General Staff denying Russian claims that two US-supplied HIMARS light multiple rocket launchers had been destroyed. They instead said that the weapons were being used to inflict “devastating blows” on the invading forces.

Luhansk’s regional governor Serhiy Haidai has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of carrying out a scorched earth policy, “burning down and destroying everything on their way” as resistance remains strong in villages around the city of Lysychansk, which recently fell to Russian forces.

The Russian parliament is rushing through two new bills to impose strict controls on the country’s economy and require that businesses supply the armed forces.

The United Nations has said that nearly 9 million people have now left Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s invasion. Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova has said that the country is investigating over 21,000 Russian war crimes committed since the beginning of the invasion.

A court in Russia has ordered the suspension of Kazakh oil exports to the West for a month. Russia controls the Novorossiisk Black Sea oil terminal where tankers are loaded with oil that transits, via a pipeline, from Kazakhstan’s Tengiz oilfield. Western sanctions have restricted Russia’s oil and gas exports, increasing demand for producers like Kazakhstan.

But the President of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, has refused to recognize the pro-Russian, so-called People’s Republic of Donetsk and the People’s Republic of Luhansk, in eastern Ukraine, and has also said that Kazakhstan might increase its oil exports to the European Union.