Ukrainian border guards said they destroyed $28 million worth of Russian equipment overnight near Hulyaipole in southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, including rocket launchers and a rare Zoopark radar.
Hulyaipole, the hometown of Ukraine’s historic anarchist revolutionary Nestor Makhno, lies about 87 kilometers (54 miles) east of Zaporizhzhia, with analysts warning its fall could open the way to the regional capital. Since late 2025, Russian forces have advanced and now control much of the city, according to the open-source battlefield map DeepState.
According to Ukraine’s State Border Guard Service (DPSU), pilots from the Phoenix unit located and struck three multiple rocket launcher systems (MLRSs) in the early hours of Sunday, April 5, including two BM-21 Grad systems and one BM-27 Uragan.
The BM-21 Grad (meaning “hailstorm” in Russian) is a self-propelled 122mm MLRS designed in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. A single BM-21 launcher can fire up to 40 rockets rapidly from its truck-mounted array.
The BM-27 Uragan is a Soviet 220mm self-propelled MLRS, primarily used for deploying cluster munitions, with a maximum range of 500 kilometers (311 miles).
In addition to the MLRSs, Ukraine also destroyed a Russian Zoopark radar system. According to the DPSU, the Zoopark is an extremely rare and strategic target, with only up to 15 units destroyed since the start of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion.
The Zoopark-1 is designed to counter artillery by detecting mortar shells within a 20-kilometer (12-mile) radius, artillery shells up to 30 kilometers (19 miles) away, and surface-to-air missiles up to 50 kilometers (31 miles), pinpointing their launch locations.
A single Zoopark-1 complex is valued at Hr.1 billion (around $23 million).
Its presence in eastern Ukraine’s occupied Donbas region was first documented in 2016 by volunteers from the international group InformNapalm, who published photos highlighting its distinct features. However, Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) said the system was found in occupied Ukraine even earlier.
“It [the Zoopark] has been on our territory since 2014. We detected it in the fall of 2014 and even more so in 2015, when the 1st and 2nd ‘army corps’ were already established,” HUR Deputy Head Vadym Skibitsky said.
Russia’s defense ministry said Zoopark-1 systems were also deployed to Syria, where Russian forces were actively engaged and maintained a major military presence before the ousting of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. HUR said Russia often uses conflict zones to test such equipment.
Drone footage shows the destruction of the Russian equipment, though Kyiv Post could not independently verify the time or location of the video.
“The total cost of the destroyed equipment is $28 million. And this is on top of the usual everyday targets that the unit’s border guards eliminate around the clock,” the DPSU’s report reads.