MOSCOW: Russia said that 63 of its troops were killed on New Year’s Eve in Ukrainian missile strikes on their quarters in the town of Makiivka in the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
The unusual casualty announcement by Russia’s Defense Ministry came as Russia continued its barrage of air attacks on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, although Mayor Vitali Klitschko said all 40 drones targeting the city and its environs had been shot down.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Ukraine hit the Makiivka site with four of the six rockets fired from the precision High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) that the United States has dispatched to Ukraine’s forces. Russia said it shot down two of the incoming missiles.
The Ukrainian military did not directly confirm the strike but tacitly acknowledged it and claimed it was more deadly than Russia reported.
The Strategic Communications Directorate of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said Sunday that about 400 Russian soldiers were killed in a vocational school building in Makiivka and about 300 more were injured. The Russian statement said the strike occurred “in the area of Makiivka” and didn’t mention the vocational school.
Daniil Bezsonov, a senior Russian-installed official in the Moscow-controlled parts of the Donetsk region, said the building housing the Russian troops had suffered a “massive blow.”
“There were dead and wounded, the exact number is still unknown,” Bezsonov said on the Telegram messaging app. “The building itself was badly damaged.”
Pro-Russian nationalist bloggers seethed at the attack and blamed military officials.
“What happened in Makiivka is horrible,” wrote Archangel Spetsnaz Z, a Russian military blogger with more than 700,000 followers on Telegram.
“Who came up with the idea to place personnel in large numbers in one building, where even a fool understands that even if they hit with artillery, there will be many wounded or dead?” he said.
(VOA)
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