Russia claims a new year missile attack that killed at least 89 soldiers was caused by troops using mobile phones despite a ban.
Officials said the enemy found its target by massively using phones.
The attack on a conscript college in Makiivka, occupied Donetsk, killed 400 soldiers and wounded 300, according to Ukraine.
Russia has acknowledged the most war deaths.
Russia said a vocational college fired six rockets from a US-made Himars rocket system at 00:01 Moscow time on New Year’s Day, two of which were shot down. Putin had just delivered his annual new year address on Russian TV.
The ministry of defence announced Wednesday that Lt Col Bachurin, the regiment’s deputy commander, was killed. The statement reported a commission investigating the incident.
However, it was “already obvious” that troops using mobile phones in range of Ukrainian weapons caused the attack.
“This allowed the enemy to locate and determine the coordinates of military personnel for a missile strike.”
Lt Gen Sergei Sevryukov said “all the necessary measures are currently being adopted to prevent this kind of tragic incident in the future” and that officials found responsible would be prosecuted.
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Two reasons made the defence ministry’s statement striking.
89 military personnel have died. Moscow’s previous death toll of 63 was the war’s highest. Ukraine and unofficial Russian sources claim the Makiivka death toll is much higher.
Second, “responsible officials” would be held accountable, implying a mistake. Moscow rarely admits mistakes.
The vocational college was full of soldiers, likely from President Vladimir Putin’s September partial mobilisation of 300,000. Near the rubble, ammunition was stored.
Denis Pushilin, the head of Russia’s proxy authority in Donetsk, praised those caught up in the missile strike, saying they tried to pull comrades out of the building. He added that some returning to the building died.
With such a high official death toll, one would expect the Russian military’s latest update on Makiivka’s horrific events to top Russian state TV news today.
No. Rossiya-24’s morning bulletins barely mentioned the story.
The defence ministry statement was briefly mentioned on Channel One’s main news programme, but it was buried at the end of a report about alleged Ukrainian front-line victories and losses.
“A whole series of Russian missile attacks were unleashed on the first days of the new year against Ukrainian nationalists and foreign accomplices of the Kyiv regime,” the Channel One correspondent boasted, using common false narratives to describe Ukrainian forces.
