Enemies settled on the territory of an abandoned mine near Luhansk in the urban-type village of Yuvileyniy.

At the beginning of February, a photo of the allegedly captured Gvozdika self-propelled gun appeared in a Telegram channel close to the “Wagner” PMC. Thanks to this picture, it was possible to find out the location of the repair base of the Russian occupiers in the Luhansk region.

The investigation was conducted by journalists of Radio Liberty. On February 3, a post with a photo was published in the Telegram channel “Sith’s Corner”. It is known for its close status to PMV “Wagner”. However, 40 minutes before publication, the picture appeared on the Vkontakte page of 55-year-old city resident Volodymyr Lapin. In his youth, the man served in the Air Force and participated in the war against Ukraine as a volunteer. Apparently, it was from his page that they took the photo that appeared in the Sith Corner.

Lapin, together with the Gvozdika self-propelled gun, published several other pictures. They were made on the territory of the abandoned Luhansk mine, located southeast of Luhansk. Visual landmarks, in particular the building with the red star, helped to determine this. Thanks to the study of satellite images for January 7, 2023, the journalists managed to find out that the photo from the Ukrainian self-propelled gun “Gvozdyk” was taken in the southern part of the mine.

Other pictures on Lapin’s page show workshops where various Russian equipment was placed. And at least one of them was made on the territory of “Luhanska”. It was identified by the characteristic windows of the building.

Using the mine as a base

The accumulation of equipment on the territory of “Luhanska” was recorded for the first time in 2016. Then the investigators of the InformNapalm project discovered pictures of the militants of the so-called “DPR” and “LPR” taken at the mine back in 2015. The images showed people with weapons undergoing training at the industrial site that was present in Lapin’s pictures. And on the pages of the separatists there were photos with ammunition, probably in the shops of “Luhanska”.

Military equipment on the territory of the mine is also clearly visible on Yandex and Google satellite images for 2019 and 2020. This leads to the conclusion that the occupiers continuously used “Luhansk” as their base for repairing equipment and possibly storing ammunition. This fact is confirmed by the video from the car video recorder of local resident Vitaly Kolesnichenko. The video, published in January, proves that within the boundaries of the abandoned mine, the miners still place military equipment.

At the end of October 2022, a fire broke out on the territory of “Luhanska”. Local Telegram channels reported this and published a video as confirmation. Representatives of the so-called “Ministry of Emergency” of the “LPR” called the cause of the incident “careless handling of fire by unidentified persons.”

Why is it impossible to destroy the base

• The distance from the current front line to Jubilee is approximately 90 km. This is slightly more than the radius of damage of ammunition to HIMARS and similar MLRS.
• However, “Luhansk” is within range of the long-range GLSDB projectiles, which they promised to transfer to the US in one of the military aid packages. The delivery was announced on February 2.
• According to Bloomberg, GLSDB will arrive in Ukraine in just 9 months, i.e. in November. The Boeing company is to produce the projectiles intended to be sent to the Armed Forces.