According to Russia, soldiers were using their mobile phones when a new year’s rocket attack that killed at least 89 Russian servicemen occurred.
On January 1st, near midnight, Ukraine attacked a conscription academy in Makiivka, in the occupied Donetsk region.
According to the Russian military, the enemy was able to find its target because soldiers were using forbidden phones.
Moscow had upheld the figure of 63 Russian servicemen dead until Wednesday, despite claims by Ukraine that nearly 400 Russian soldiers were killed in the missile attack on New Year’s Day on Sunday.
The initial Russian acknowledgement of 63 fatalities was already exceedingly rare because it represented the largest single-raid death toll Moscow had acknowledged since the beginning of its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
In a video statement published by the Russian defence ministry early on Wednesday, Lieutenant General Sergey Sevryukov declared, “The number of our dead comrades has gone up to 89.” According to him, more victims were discovered buried beneath debris in the town of Makiivka, raising the death toll.
Early on Wednesday morning, the department of defence released a statement on Telegram stating that Lt Col Bachurin, the regiment’s deputy commander, was among those murdered.
According to the statement, a panel is looking into the incident’s circumstances.
Despite being forbidden, he continued, it is “already apparent” that the presence and “mass usage” of mobile phones by troops near Ukrainian weapons was the primary cause of the strike.
This factor allowed the enemy to locate and determine the coordinates of the location of military personnel for a missile strike.”
Anger among Russian nationalists and some lawmakers who are once more challenging the military plan of Moscow’s commanders in Ukraine has been sparked by the deadly attack on a vocational school that had been turned into military barracks.
Russian officials increased the number of Russian soldiers killed in the strike from 63 to 89, though it is impossible to confirm this. Moscow rarely confirms any casualties on the battlefield.
The 300,000 soldiers called up during President Vladimir Putin’s partial mobilisation in September were all crammed into the vocational college at the time. Also nearby the site, which was in ruins, were storage facilities for ammunition.
Girkin attributed the defeats to Russia’s “untrainable” generals.
