Ukrainian Rebels Deployed Crude Rockets Opposite Kyiv’s Marine Corps

Five years ago pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast crafted a pair of crude rocket-launchers and, with great fanfare, showed them off at a weapons exposition in Donetsk city.

Now at least one of the do-it-yourself launchers is in action, reportedly in the vicinity of Urozhaine in southern Donetsk Oblast. It probably is no coincidence there’s a unit from the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic on the battlefield near Urozhaine: the weirdo reconnaissance group “Cascade.”

The DPR paraded two very different launchers in Donetsk on May 9, 2018. One was a dual set of 32-round 214-millimeter rocket launchers on a KrAZ six-by-six truck chassis. The other, a pair of huge 324-millimeter rockets also on a KrAZ chassis.

The former goes by the name Cheburashka, a Russian cartoon character. The latter is called Snezhinka, or “snowflake.” Both launchers reportedly have a six-mile range, which is startlingly short—especially for a rocket the size of the 324-millimeter Snowflake. Even the oldest M26 model of the U.S. Army’s own 227-millimeter rocket ranges as far as 20 miles.

But the DPR’s State Innovation Company, which produced Cheburashka and Snezhinka, can be forgiven for a lack of sophistication and capacity. It’s not even clear the company could produce more than one copy of each launcher.

Cheburashka made a second appearance a year ago last fall. And this week, videos circulated depicting both Cheburashka and Snezhinka in action, the latter ostensibly near Urozhaine. The town sits astride the Mokri Yaly River Valley, where all four of the Ukrainian marine corps’ front-line brigades slowly have been advancing.

The Russians and their separatist allies can’t afford to screw around on the Mokri Yaly axis. Which is why the presence of the Cascade recon unit is so strange. Cascade famously hosts bloggers as well as Russian politicians and their sons, so they can say they’ve been to war. “They participate for less than a month, take photos, post them, then go home,” Jeff Hawn, a fellow at the Washington D.C.-based think-tank New Lines Institute, told France24.

Urozhaine is a dangerous place for a partially pretend combat unit. But it might present Cascade an opportunity to fire the DPR’s crude, short-range rockets and post dramatic videos of the blast and debris.

Whether the rockets actually hit anything of value—well, that may not be Cascade’s top priority. Even on a sector of the front where the Russians and their allies are in actual peril.