As a TB-2 watched a pair of Ukrainian air force Su-27 fighters streaked low over the island, dropping unguided bombs. Another TB-2 strike destroyed a Russian Mi-8 helicopter while it was offloading troops. When the Russians sent in reinforcements-a Raptor escorting a landing craft hauling a spare SAM launcher-the drones blew up the landing craft and destroyed the launcher. The Russians in return shot down at least one TB-2. The drones also sank as many as four Raptor gunboats sailing around the island. In a heady 10 days, the drones destroyed the air-defenses on the island, including a ZU-23 cannon and a Strela short-range surface-to-air-missile launcher. That was a virtual invitation to the Ukrainian navy’s missile-armed TB-2s to assault Snake Island. Moskva’s sinking compelled Black Sea Fleet commanders to pull their three frigates farther from the Ukrainian coast lest they also catch a Neptune or two. On April 13, a Ukrainian navy battery armed with locally made Neptune anti-ship missiles holed and sank Moskva. The Ukrainian navy and air force had spent months softening up the island before the 2S22 opened fire. Two months later the 2S22 had redeployed to southwest Ukraine, which at its closest point is just 20 miles from Snake Island-well within the 2S22’s 25-mile range with standard ammunition. Pashynskyi circulated videos depicting the 2S22 firing at Russian targets spotted by drones. So in early May, the Ukrainian army packed up the gun and deployed it along the front, presumably somewhere in the east. The 2S22 had fired a few rounds in testing back in October.
“Destroy it so that does not go to the enemy,” is how Ukrainian politician Serhiy Pashynskyi described the officials’ thinking.īut the Russian offensive met stiff resistance and ground to a halt-first in the south, then in the north. Officials at the Kramatorsk factory prepared to blow up the 2S22. On the other hand, there are a dozen countries that can supply-and are supplying-NATO-size shells by the hundreds of thousands.Īs a Russian army attacked across Ukraine along multiple fronts, the 155-millimeter gun, mounted on a six-by-six KrAZ-6322 truck, narrowly escaped destruction-by Kramatorsk’s own employees.
Production problems at factories in Ukraine mean the Soviet calibers are in ever-shorter supply. The new howitzer fires NATO-standard 155-millimeter shells rather than Soviet-standard 122-millimeter or 152-millimeter shells-allowing it to tap into foreign ammunition stocks. The 28-ton 2S22 has a major advantage over the Ukrainian army’s roughly 1,800 ex-Soviet guns. The Kramatorsk Heavy Machinery Plant, in Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, built the 2S22 around five years ago.
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