The Russian Ministry of Defence has claimed that it has destroyed a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile defence system, with NATO states still refusing to set up a no-fly over the country.

The footage appears to show images from a targeting system in the air locking onto a moving vehicle on the ground as it moves between buildings that appear to be warehouses. The vehicle can then be seen slowly reversing into a building, no doubt for camouflage purposes, as it is reportedly tracked by the Russian targeting system.

The footage then cuts, presumably then showing the same location but zoomed out. Suddenly, there is an explosion as the building apparently intended to shelter the Ukrainian anti-aircraft vehicle from view is destroyed in a large, fiery explosion.

A plume of thick smoke can be seen rising into the air rapidly before the camera cuts again and shows zoomed-in images of the destruction. A fire appears to rage as the footage ends. It is currently unclear how many casualties there were in the attack.

Newsflash obtained the footage today (Wednesday, 23rd March) from the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD), which claimed: “Footage of objective monitoring of the destruction of the launcher of the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”

Unconfirmed reports in Russian media also allege that the target was an S-300 anti-aircraft missile system belonging to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. They went one step further and said that it had been set up on the northern outskirts of the capital city Kyiv.

One of the sites reporting on the footage is e-news.su, which features the pro-Kremlin hashtag “#StopUkroNazism” under its banner. The website also has a ‘dot su’ domain name, which stands for ‘Soviet Union’ and which was originally set up in 1990. But there are reportedly still numerous websites with that domain name in operation today.

If Russian media are to be believed, this could prove to be problematic strategically for Ukraine, with NATO member states still refusing to set up a no-fly zone in the country and with numerous Ukrainian cities falling victim to Russian bombs.

It has been widely reported that Russian land forces have become bogged down after they failed to capture the Ukrainian capital quickly, with the Kremlin now apparently resorting to trying to break the morale of Ukraine’s men, women and children by bombing them out of house and home.

The UN’s International Court of Justice has ruled Russia’s invasion of Ukraine illegal and has ordered Russian President Vladimir Putin to remove his troops immediately. Former British Prime Ministers Sir John Major and Gordon Brown have called for the creation of a Nuremberg-style international tribunal to investigate Putin.

The proposal has been co-signed by 140 intellectuals and academics, as well as Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Benjamin Ferencz, who is 102 years old and who prosecuted Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg.