What the Nova Kakhovka strike revealed by 18 July 2022
A retrospective on the Nova Kakhovka explosion, the competing accounts of it and what the reports of the time established.
What did the strike on Nova Kakhovka mean for the war as it stood on 18 July 2022? The occupied city had been hit days earlier, and the accounts that circulated afterwards were still being weighed.
As reported at the time, a massive explosion occurred in Nova Kakhovka on 12 July 2022 after Ukrainian forces destroyed a Russian arms depot. The background to the event dates the missile attack to 11 July 2022. Russia said Ukraine used HIMARS missiles, which Ukraine had recently acquired from the United States.
Two accounts of the damage
The Russian state news agency TASS claimed that a market, a hospital and civilian housing were also damaged, and that several civilians were killed. It also reported that Artem Nasbulin, a general of the Russian 22nd Army Corps, was allegedly among the dead. These were Russian claims, and the reports attributed them to TASS.
Why it mattered
The strike was listed as part of a Ukrainian summer counteroffensive. Its target was an arms depot in a Russian-occupied city, and it came soon after Ukraine acquired the HIMARS systems Russia named. The reports tied the two together only through Russia's statement about the weapons used.
By 18 July 2022 the episode therefore stood as a documented strike on a Russian depot, together with Russian assertions about civilian harm and a senior officer's death.
