Russian anger grows over strike that killed dozens of troops in Ukraine
As fury over the deaths of dozens of Russian soldiers in one of the Ukraine War’s worst strikes rose, Russian nationalists and some MPs sought punishment for commanders they accused of ignoring threats.
A makeshift barracks in a vocational college in Makiivka, the twin city of the Russian-occupied regional capital of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, was destroyed in a blazing bomb on New Year’s Eve, according to a rare disclosure from Russia’s defense ministry, which claimed 63 soldiers were killed.
The Russian defense ministry said that four rockets fired from HIMARS launchers built in the United States struck the ammunition dump near the facility where the soldiers were being held, according to Russian criticism.
The attack on Makiivka on New Year’s Eve occurred as Russia launched waves of drone attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities that have since become nightly occurrences.
Russian officials reportedly attacked areas of the Donetsk region that are under Ukrainian control on Monday, damaging an ice rink in the town of Druzhkivka as well as the villages of Yakovlivka and Kramatorsk.
The number of Russian fatalities in Makiivka, according to Ukraine, was in the hundreds, despite claims to the contrary by pro-Russian officials.
The amount of the damage, according to Russian military bloggers, was caused by munitions being kept in the same structure as a barracks despite the fact that commanders were aware it was in the path of Ukrainian rockets.
One of the most prominent Russian nationalist military bloggers, Igor Girkin, a former leader of pro-Russian soldiers in eastern Ukraine, claimed that hundreds had been killed or injured. According to him, the location had been used to store ammunition and contained unmasked military hardware.
