This photo shows the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) firing during exercises in the Philippines. Russia accused Ukraine of using the same weapons to carry out the attack.
Jam Sta Rosa/AFP via Getty Images
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Jam Sta Rosa/AFP via Getty Images
This photo shows the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) firing during exercises in the Philippines. Russia accused Ukraine of using the same weapons to carry out the attack.
Jam Sta Rosa/AFP via Getty Images
The Ukrainian military is taking credit for an explosion that may have killed hundreds of Russian conscripts in far-eastern Ukraine in the first minutes of the new year. Russia’s defense ministry corroborated the reports on Monday, but claimed only 63 dead.
Officials in the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic”, a part of Ukraine that Russia illegally annexed in September, expressed public outrage at the attack, blaming Moscow for massing so many troops in one place.
Both sides say the strike took place in Makiivka, a suburb east of Donetsk, a major Ukrainian city that has been under Russian control since 2014, but details of exactly what happened are murky. Western journalists are not allowed into the area and therefore rely on both Russian and Ukrainian sources of information.
The attack potentially sets a record for Russian casualties in a single attack in the war so far.
Local social media channels in the Donetsk region reported massive explosions precisely at midnight on New Year’s Day. Videos of the destruction emerged Sunday afternoon, including one that appeared to show dead bodies and a pile of rubble where a vocational school once stood. Internet sleuths soon geolocated and verified the videos.
“The school was a known Russian garrison, since 2014,” Oleh Zhdanov, a leading Ukrainian military analyst, tells NPR.
“[Since February]most of the Russian soldiers were scattered across the front, but when Ukraine realized that the reservists were gathering in one place they acted,” added Zhdanov.
On the eve of New Year’s Day, the Ukrainian Strategic Command posted a sarcastic note on its official Telegram channel about “Santa Claus filling body bags with 400 corpses.”
Russia makes a rare admission of battlefield losses
The news sparked outrage among pro-Russian leaders in the breakaway region.
“I can’t blame Ukraine. The real killer is the son of a**** who made our fighters easy targets,” posted Alexey Sukonkin, an influential blogger in Russian-occupied Ukraine.
Russian state news agency TASS blamed the soldiers’ mobile phone data for informing Ukrainians of the location of their barracks.
Igor Girkin, the former defense minister of the separatist Donetsk region, shared similar sentiments online and claimed to have visited the site of the attack.
“The number of dead and injured runs into many hundreds,” he said.
Finally, on Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry issued a statement accusing Ukraine of using US-supplied HIMARS rockets to carry out the attack. The public statement made a rare admission of battlefield losses.
Ukraine’s General Staff followed the Russian announcement by confirming the attack, although without specifying the suspected number of victims or the weapons used.
“It takes a long time to figure out how many people die from an attack like this,” Zhdanov said. “But we can get a general sense.”
Attacks like this are likely to cause unrest in Russia
The apparent attack in Makiivka came just days after Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov urged Russian men of draft age to desert or protest the war.
“As this war drags on, your personal chances of dying will increase,” he said.
As Russian media began reporting on the destruction, Russian citizens who claimed to have conscripted relatives stationed at Makiivka demanded to know if they were among the dead.
Military analyst Oleh Zhdanov says strikes like this will likely continue to fuel unrest in Russia, where anti-draft demonstrations took place last summer.
“There will surely be another mobilization soon,” says Zhdanov, “so the Russians are minimizing their losses because they are afraid of massive resistance.”