Moscow said at least 63 Russian soldiers had been killed in a Ukrainian attack on a Russian barracks Monday, one of the deadliest strikes of the war so far.
The soldiers were being temporarily housed in a former vocational college building in Makiivka, on the outskirts of the occupied city of Donetsk, Moscow’s Ministry of Defense said.
Moscow said the facility was hit by four Ukrainian rockets fired from the US-made HIMARS system. The Ministry of Defense said two additional incoming rockets were shot down.
The Ukrainian military did not directly confirm the strike, but acknowledged an attack on a vocational school where it claimed as many as 400 mobilized Russian troops had been killed.
Russian military bloggers also claimed the Russian death toll was higher, possibly in the hundreds. And in a rare move, Russian commentators publicly blamed the Moscow military establishment for the losses.
Daniil Bezsonov, spokesman for Russia’s puppet regime in the Donetsk province, criticized the Russian command’s decision to house troops in the facility, claiming that “high command is still not aware of the capabilities of [the HIMARS].”
A Ukrainian HIMARS rocket. Moscow claims the US-made technology was behind the barracks strike. HANNIBAL HANSCHKE/EPA-EFE/Shutte“I hope that the perpetrators who made the decision to use this facility will be punished,” he said on the messaging app Telegram.
Igor Grikin, a former commander of pro-Russian troops in the Donbas region who has emerged as a popular pro-war pundit on Telegram, said the death toll had been so high in part because Russian forces had been storing ammunition where the troops slept.
“What happened in Makiivka is horrible,” wrote another popular Russian blogger who goes by the handle Archangel Spetznaz Z. “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 wrote, according to a Reuters translation.
“Each mistake has a name.”
Russia’s official acknowledgment of the strike and its casualties is noteworthy in a war where Moscow has been reticent to release any death toll. Moscow officially confirmed only one death in April when its Black Sea flagship the Moskva was sunk by Ukrainian defenses.
The strike comes as Russia continues to pour ground forces into the eastern Donbas region in a months-long bid for control of Bakhmut, a city some 35 miles north of Makiivka.
Meanwhile, Russian forces launched a series of suicide drones against a number of Ukrainian cities overnight.
Ukrainian authorities Monday said they’d shot down all 39 drones in the most recent attack, including 22 aimed at the capital city, Kyiv.
With Post wires
