A video posted online Thursday shows a unit of Russian soldiers being taken out by artillery from Ukraine’s armed forces.
WarTranslated, an independent media project that translates materials about the war into English, shared the video on X (formerly Twitter). The clip’s caption said that the strike was undertaken by the 45th Air Assault Brigade of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky‘s military and that it occurred north of the Ukrainian village of Odradivka, which is near Bakhmut in the Donetsk region.
Newsweek could not independently verify the video and contacted Russia’s Ministry of Defense via email for comment.
Settlements around Bakhmut have seen intense fighting in recent weeks. Bakhmut itself was the scene of a long-contested battle before Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s forces announced in May that they had seized control of the city. However, Ukraine’s military has increased operations around Bakhmut during its ongoing counteroffensive in what Western analysts believe is an attempt to recapture the city.
In the video posted by WarTranslated, artillery rounds can be seen firing in the night scene before exploding on a Russian unit.
“Crazy footage of Russian infantry being decimated by artillery (including cluster munitions) to the north of Odradivka, Bakhmut direction. Work of the 45th Brigade,” WarTranslated wrote.
The video shared by WarTranslated first appeared on the Telegram channel for the Ukrainian news outlet DeepState.
The aerial assault footage was recorded from a Ukrainian drone using a thermal-imaging camera, according to DeepState’s original post.
DeepState also reported that fighting continues in the area around Andriivka, another village near Bakhmut. The outlet said Ukraine’s forces were “gradually overcoming the enemy’s defenses” in these skirmishes, while “fire damage continues to be inflicted on the concentration of the enemy in the rear.”
On Wednesday, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank reported in an assessment of the war that the Ukrainian General Staff said its military had “achieved unspecified success east of Klishchiivka (4 miles southwest of Bakhmut) and Andriivka (6 miles southwest of Bakhmut).”
The ISW report said that “Russian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut on October 11 but did not make any confirmed advances.”
Last month, Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade announced it had liberated Andriivka, which it called “key to success in all further directions” in a post on the brigade’s Telegram channel.
Andriivka’s recapture came weeks after another important tactical victory for Ukrainian forces in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, where they successfully broke through Russia’s defenses and took back the village of Robotyne.