Ukraine demoralizes Russia with the deadliest blow of the war – POLITICO

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KYIV — Ukraine is seizing its deadliest attack against Russian soldiers yet in the war to warn the enemy that they are not safe in bases behind the front lines, while the Russians turn on their commanders over the scale of the missile attack on a building in Makiivka in eastern Ukraine.

On January 1, Ukraine struck a base in Makevka in the Donetsk region. Given the devastating scale of the blast, the British Ministry of Defense speculated that the ammunition had been stored near the troops’ accommodation in the Vocational School building, some 12.5 kilometers behind the front line.

Late in the night of 1 January, the Strategic Communications Center of the Armed Forces of Ukraine claimed that the strike killed 400 and wounded 300 newly mobilized Russian soldiers. The next day, the General Staff of the Armed Forces confirmed the strike on the Makevka base. “Up to 10 units of enemy military equipment of various types were destroyed and damaged in the concentration area in Makevka. The exact number of losses of military personnel is still being verified,” said the spokesman for the General Staff, Oleksandr Shtabun, in a video statement.

On Wednesday, the Russian Defense Ministry put the death toll at 89. This is the first time the Russian ministry has officially acknowledged killing so many soldiers in a single attack since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24. .

The Armed Forces of Ukraine did not make any other official statements.

Instead, the Ukrainian Armed Forces Strategic Communication Center was intimidating the Russians, with messages about other military bases for Russian soldiers supposedly targeted in the occupied parts of Zaporizhia region.

The Armed Forces Strategic Communications Center has reposted a video from an anonymous channel called Capitan Himars. In the video, a soldier stands near a HIMARS missile battery firing and suggests that Russian soldiers who want to return home alive send the coordinates of Russian military vehicles, weapons depots and command posts. “If you give me that, I will not target the soldiers’ bases, I will only destroy artillery, weapons and fuel. Then no one will send you on the attack. You will save your life and the lives of your friends,” says the soldier, covered in dust from the missile fire.

The scale of the attack also provoked recriminations from the Russian side.

The Russian Ministry of Defense initially reported 63 deaths as a result of the HIMARS strike on the local vocational school PTU-19, where the Russians were stationed. However, Russian and pro-Russian bloggers and military leaders have reported hundreds of dead and wounded and are beginning to place blame. While some blamed the commanders for deploying the soldiers in large groups, others said the blame lay with the local population who acted as observers, giving the coordinates to the Ukrainian forces.

Cell phones to blame?

The Russian Defense Ministry blamed the dead soldiers themselves.

A special commission is still investigating the incident. But it is already clear that the main reason for what happened was the massive use of cell phones by employees despite the ban,” First Deputy Head of the Main Military and Political Directorate of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation Sergey Severyukov said in a statement.

Eternal flame blooms in memory of more than 60 Russian servicemen who Russia says were killed in a Ukrainian raid on Russian-controlled territory, in Samarra, on January 3, 2023 | Arden Arkman/AFP via Getty Images

“This factor allowed the enemy to determine and determine the coordinates of the locations of military personnel to launch a missile attack.”

Ukrainian forces refused to confirm or deny this statement. “So far, we are not giving any further comments on this,” said Andrei Yusov of the Military Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

On January 3, mourning ceremonies were held in three major cities of the Samara Oblast – Togliatti, Syzran and Samara, where many troops came. Samara Governor Dmitry Azarov asked the relatives of those killed from the invading forces, who continued to demand information about the soldiers from the authorities, to wait until the end of the investigation. This will allow to identify the dead and a complete enumeration of the wounded, who, according to Azarov, were taken to hospitals in the Rostov region.

Pro-Kremlin journalist Anastasia Kachevarova reported that about 200 soldiers survived the attack.

Ukrainian open-source information society InformNapalm has identified one survivor as Nikita Bakulin, a 28-year-old recruiter from Samara, and published a video of him allegedly sending a video message to his mother on January 3 in which he blames two colonels. to tragedy. The video was previously posted on Russia’s military Telegram channels.

The governor of the Saratov region, Roman Busargin, denied that any recruits from the Saratov region were killed in the attack and expressed his condolences to the neighboring region.

Citing the recruits’ wives, the Russian media website Istories reported that the Russian commanders were planning to send the recruits in Makiivka to attack but changed their minds due to a lack of resources and weapons.

“Under the conditions of increasing our resources near the front line, not only the Makiivka Vocational School was threatened. We know that there are still sites with an increased concentration of personnel known to the enemy – we know,” Alexander Khodakovsky, one of the top Russian-backed military commanders in Donetsk, said in a statement. We are waiting for the reaction of the military leadership… “If our military leadership does not take any measures before the next such massive blow to the enemy, then such inaction should be regarded as treason,” Khodakovsky added.

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