Dozens of Russian recruits were killed in a Ukrainian New Year attack on their neighborhoods in the Russian-held part of Ukraine’s Donetsk province, a source close to the Russian-appointed leaders said on Monday.
Footage posted online, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed a building believed to be a vocational college in the mining town of Makiivka reduced to a field of smoldering rubble.
The Donetsk source, who declined to be named, said: “According to my information, there are less than 100 deaths so far.”
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said as many as 400 Russians had been killed.
“What is being reported is greatly exaggerated. Fifty-eight wounded were brought in overnight, which is a lot for a normal day and not much if the reports of hundreds of deaths are to be believed. It was a site Russian recruits mobilized.”
Reuters could not verify the battlefield account.
The Russian Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In his daily report on Sunday, he said he had destroyed seven HIMARS rockets fired by Ukrainian forces, particularly near Makiivka.
Russia has mobilized at least 300,000 troops since September and is sending them to bolster its faltering military campaign in Ukraine.
“MASSIVE STRIKE”
Daniel Bezsonova senior Russian-backed regional official in Moscow-controlled parts of the Donetsk region said the vocational school had been
hit
by US-made HIMARS rockets around midnight, when locals would have celebrated the start of the new year.
“There was a massive strike against the American vocational school MLRS HIMARS,” Bezsonov said on the Telegram messaging app. “There were deaths and injuries, the exact number is still unknown. The building itself was badly damaged.”
Igor Girkina nationalist and former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer who helped Russia annex Crimea in 2014 and then organized pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine, said in a Telegram post on Monday. 09:08 GMT that “the number of dead and injured reaches several hundred”.
Girkin, who has bitterly criticized Russian military failures in Ukraine, said ammunition was stored in the same building where the recruits were housed.
“This is not the only (extremely dense) deployment of personnel and equipment in the HIMARS missile kill zone,” he wrote. “And – yes – this is not the first such case.”
Footage posted online, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed a building believed to be a vocational college in the mining town of Makiivka reduced to a field of smoldering rubble.
The Donetsk source, who declined to be named, said: “According to my information, there are less than 100 deaths so far.”
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said as many as 400 Russians had been killed.
“What is being reported is greatly exaggerated. Fifty-eight wounded were brought in overnight, which is a lot for a normal day and not much if the reports of hundreds of deaths are to be believed. It was a site Russian recruits mobilized.”
Reuters could not verify the battlefield account.
The Russian Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In his daily report on Sunday, he said he had destroyed seven HIMARS rockets fired by Ukrainian forces, particularly near Makiivka.
Russia has mobilized at least 300,000 troops since September and is sending them to bolster its faltering military campaign in Ukraine.
“MASSIVE STRIKE”
Daniel Bezsonova senior Russian-backed regional official in Moscow-controlled parts of the Donetsk region said the vocational school had been
hit
by US-made HIMARS rockets around midnight, when locals would have celebrated the start of the new year.
“There was a massive strike against the American vocational school MLRS HIMARS,” Bezsonov said on the Telegram messaging app. “There were deaths and injuries, the exact number is still unknown. The building itself was badly damaged.”
Igor Girkina nationalist and former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer who helped Russia annex Crimea in 2014 and then organized pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine, said in a Telegram post on Monday. 09:08 GMT that “the number of dead and injured reaches several hundred”.
Girkin, who has bitterly criticized Russian military failures in Ukraine, said ammunition was stored in the same building where the recruits were housed.
“This is not the only (extremely dense) deployment of personnel and equipment in the HIMARS missile kill zone,” he wrote. “And – yes – this is not the first such case.”
