Russia Confirms Over 60 Soldiers Killed In Ukrainian Rocket Attacks

Russia confirmed over 60 Russian soldiers killed in Ukrainian rocket attacks.

Eko Hot Blog reports that at least 63 Russian soldiers were killed after Ukrainian rockets struck a building housing service members in an occupied city in Donetsk, Ukraine, early on New Year’s Day.

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The Russian Defense Ministry released the figure on Monday.

Although Ukraine claimed that the attacks killed “about 400” Russian soldiers, the lower figure still represents one of the deadliest single strikes against Russian forces in Ukraine since the war began in February 2022.

A spokesman for the Russian-installed proxy government in the Donetsk region, Daniil Bezsonov, called the strike in the city of Makiivka “a massive blow.”

Ukraine reportedly hit the building using HIMARS, a guided rocket system supplied by the United States whose range of dozens of miles has for months helped Kyiv’s forces strike deep behind the front lines.

According to the New York Times, the system is part of a growing arsenal of sophisticated Western weapons that have helped Ukraine change the course of the conflict.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said that four HIMARS rockets hit the soldiers’ temporary base in Makiivka.

The strike, which took place shortly after midnight on New Year’s Day, immediately provoked outrage among some of Russia’s pro-war military commentators, who said it represented the latest example of Russian military commanders’ ineptitude in the war and their disregard for the lives of Russian soldiers.

A former Russian paramilitary commander in Ukraine, Igor Girkin, said the building, described by both Russian and Ukrainian officials as a vocational school, was “almost completely destroyed” because “ammunition stored in the same building” detonated in the strike

Donetsk, one of four Ukrainian regions that Russia illegally annexed in October, has remained the site of some of the heaviest fighting in Ukraine, even though little ground has changed hands there for months.

The city of Makiivka, which forms part of the metropolitan area of the regional capital of Donetsk, is well within range of Ukraine’s longer-range artillery on the other side of the region’s jagged frontline.

The attack came weeks after another long range Ukrainian strike against Russian forces in Donbas, the eastern industrial area that includes Donetsk and the neighboring Luhansk region.

In December, an attack on a hotel in the city of Kadiivka, in Luhansk, killed members of the Wagner paramilitary group who were using it as a base, according to Ukrainian authorities in the region.

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The Wagner force, whose leader has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, has played a significant role in Russia’s war effort in Donetsk.

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