KYIV: Russian nationalists and some lawmakers have demanded punishment for commanders they accused of ignoring dangers as anger grew over the killing of dozens of Russian soldiers in one of the Ukraine war's deadliest strikes.
In a rare disclosure, Russia's
defence ministry said 63 soldiers were killed on New Year's Eve in a fiery
blast that destroyed a temporary barracks in a vocational college in Makiivka,
twin city of the Russian-occupied regional capital of Donetsk in eastern
Ukraine.
Russian critics said the soldiers were being housed alongside an ammunition dump at the site, which the Russian defence ministry said was hit by four rockets fired from US-made HIMARS launchers.
The New Year's Eve strike on
Makiivka came as Russia was launching what have become nightly waves of drone
attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.
Ukrainian officials said Russia
had on Monday struck Ukraine-controlled parts of the Donetsk region, hitting
the village of Yakovlivka, the city of Kramatorsk and destroying an ice rink in
the town of Druzhkivka.
Ukraine said the Russian death
toll in Makiivka was in the hundreds, though pro-Russian officials called that
an exaggeration.
Russian military bloggers said the extent of the destruction was a result of storing ammunition in the same building as a barracks, despite commanders knowing it was within range of Ukrainian rockets.
Igor Girkin, a former commander
of pro-Russian troops in eastern Ukraine who is now one of the highest-profile
Russian nationalist military bloggers, said hundreds had been killed or
wounded. Ammunition had been stored at the site and military equipment there
was uncamouflaged, he said.
"What happened in Makiivka
is horrible," wrote Archangel Spetznaz Z, a Russian military blogger with
more than 700,000 followers on the Telegram messaging app.
"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. Commanders "couldn't care less", he said.
Ukraine almost never publicly
claims responsibility for attacks on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine
and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy did not address the Makiivka strike in his
nightly speech on Monday.
But the General Staff of
Ukraine's Armed Forces reported the Makiivka attack as "a strike on
Russian manpower and military equipment". It did not mention casualties,
but said 10 pieces of military equipment were destroyed.
'Stupid losses'
The fury in Russia extended to lawmakers.
Grigory Karasin, a member of the
Russian Senate and former deputy foreign minister, not only demanded vengeance
against Ukraine and its NATO supporters but also "an exacting internal
analysis".
Sergei Mironov, a legislator and
former chairman of the Senate, Russia's upper house, demanded criminal
liability for the officials who had "allowed the concentration of military
personnel in an unprotected building" and "all the higher authorities
who did not provide the proper level of security".
Unverified footage posted online
of the aftermath of the blast at the Russian barracks in Makiivka showed a huge
building reduced to smoking rubble.
Some of the dead came from the
southwestern Russian region of Samara, the region's governor told Russian
media, urging concerned relatives to contact recruitment centres for information.
Andrey Medvedev, deputy speaker
of the Moscow City Duma and a pro-Kremlin journalist, said authorities, whether
civilian or military, must value Russian lives.
"Either a person is of the
highest value — and then punish for stupid losses of personnel, as for treason
to the fatherland — or the country is over," Medvedev wrote on the
Telegram messaging app.
A Russian-backed military
information centre in the Donetsk region said there had been 69 Ukrainian
attacks on the region, including Makiivka, on Monday.
'Banking on exhaustion'
Having suffered defeats on the
battlefield in the second half of 2022, Russia resorted to mass air strikes
against Ukrainian cities.
Ukraine said on Monday it had
shot down all 39 drones Russia had launched in a third night of air strikes on
civilian targets in Kyiv and other cities.
Ukrainian officials said their
success proved that Russia's tactic in recent months of raining down missiles
and drones to knock out Ukraine's energy infrastructure was increasingly
failing as Kyiv beefs up its air defences.
Russia denies targeting civilians
in what it calls a special military operation against its southern neighbour
launched on Feb. 24.
After firing dozens of missiles
on Dec. 31, Russia launched more than 80 Iranian-made Shahed drones on Jan. 1
and Jan. 2, all of which had been shot down, Zelenskiy said, adding that Russia
was planning a protracted campaign of such attacks to "exhaust" Ukraine.
"It is probably banking on
exhaustion. Exhausting our people, our anti-aircraft defences, our
energy," Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.
Ukraine, he said, had to "act and do everything so that the terrorists' fail in their aim, as all their others have failed".
