Ukraine has fired HIMARS rocket artillery shells at the city of Snezhnoye in eastern Donetsk People's Republic, DPR representatives with the Joint Center on Coordination and Control (JCCC) have indicated.
"According to military experts of the DPR JCCC, the enemy, situated in the area of the settlement of Konstantinovka, launched missiles from the M142 HIMARS Multiple Launch Rocket System supplied to the Ukrainian Armed Forces by NATO countries at the city of Snezhnoye," the press service of the JCCC said in a statement Monday.
The JCCC was established in 2015 to monitor the ceasefire in Donbass to help implement the Minsk ceasefire agreements and ensure the safety of Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe observers in the war-torn region. The monitoring center has been semi-defunct since 2017, when Russian observers were pulled out due to changes in Ukrainian legislation making it difficult for them to carry out their monitoring duties. However, Ukrainian and Donbass observers have remained in place, with the latter documenting many of the Ukrainian side's attacks against civilian settlements since the escalation of the Ukraine crisis in February.
Snezhnoye is a city of 46,000 situated in the eastern DPR, near the border with the Lugansk People's Republic and Russia. The city suffered Ukrainian aerial bombardment in July 2014 during Kiev's bid to crush local militias, which proclaimed independence in the aftermath of the US-backed coup in Kiev in February of that year.
The United States has committed eight HIMARS to Ukraine since this year's escalation of the crisis, and is training Ukrainian troops to operate the medium-to-long-range strike systems in Germany and the United Kingdom. The system has an effective firing range of up to 84 km. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov announced the arrival of the first HIMARS in Ukraine on June 23.
Russia and its Donbass allies have repeatedly warned the US and its allies against sending advanced weapons systems to Kiev, stressing there is a strong likelihood that these arms could end up on the international arms black market, and warning that Russian forces could conduct retaliatory strikes against "decision-making centers", including those in Kiev, in the event of attacks inside Russia or targeting civilian areas.
Russia's aerospace forces have also made Ukraine's NATO-provided artillery and howitzer systems a top priority target, owing to their advanced capabilities and deadliness, but finding and destroying the platforms can be complicated by their high mobility and shoot-and-scoot tactics designed to avoid retaliatory fire.