Dozens of Russian soldiers die in one of the deadliest Ukrainian attacks of the war

Makiivka School Number 19 became the grave of dozens — or hundreds — of Russian soldiers this New Year's Eve.

Makiivka is a mining town on the outskirts of Donetsk, the provincial capital, an area in eastern Ukraine occupied by Russia since 2014. A battalion of the last batch of recruited soldiers was meeting that night at School 19, where tons of ammunition were stored. through Moscow last fall.

A Ukrainian attack with Himars artillery destroyed the school converted into a base, causing the death of up to 400 Russian soldiers, according to the Ukrainian General Staff.

The Russian Ministry of Defense lowers the figure to 63 but other sources close to the invading army estimate that the number of deaths is close to 200 recruits.

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Last hour of the war in Ukraine

kyiv claims it would have delivered the deadliest blow in the war.

This would be the case even if the real figure was halfway between the estimates of the 400 deaths of the Ukrainian army and the 63 of Moscow, that is, around 200 liquidated soldiers.

The Russian Defense Ministry, in its daily bulletin, added on Monday that its shelling had killed 70 Ukrainian Foreign Legion soldiers at three bases in Kharkiv and Donetsk provinces.

The Ukrainian General Staff did not provide information about it.

The attack has provoked a cascade of criticism from Russian analysts who follow the invading troops because they believe that there has been gross negligence.

The Russian state agency TASS reported, citing local Donetsk military authorities, that the Ukrainian Armed Forces were able to identify the target thanks to the high concentration of mobile phone signals in the building.

The Russian Defense Ministry has confirmed that the base was shelled with US-supplied Himars precision artillery, one of the key weapons in the Ukrainian counter-offensive.

The Himars, with a radius of action of 80 kilometers, have been the nightmare of the Russian rear because they have caused multiple interruptions in the supply chain of weapons and military equipment, forcing Moscow troops to move their arsenals even further from the front.

The precautions against the Himars were not applied in Makiivka.

The videos shared on social networks by residents of the city show that the explosion at the base occurred at midnight on January 1 and that the detonation was so strong that the bodies of several soldiers were projected tens of meters away.

The images disseminated by the Russian media confirm that the barracks were devastated.

Igor Girkin, a veteran Russian officer of the war in Donbas convicted by international justice, published a text on January 1 in which he estimated the number of deaths at 200. Girkin criticized "the inability to train the [Russian] generals." for allowing such a concentration of units and because Ukraine has demonstrated the effectiveness of the Himars.

Prominent Russian military Telegram channels on the front added that at least 100 soldiers were killed.

The Gray Zone, one of the reference Telegram accounts within the Russian army in Ukraine, reported that at most 150 soldiers could have gathered in the building, and that the death toll would be 130. The Gray Zone and Sasha Kots, Russian journalist that accompanies the invading army,

Ukraine managed to deliver a similar blow last October in the Kherson region in the south of the country, when it destroyed a headquarters of the Russian Chechen forces, causing no less than 40 deaths, according to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Russia, for its part, affirmed that last August it liquidated 200 Ukrainian soldiers in the railway municipality of Chaplino, in the province of Dnipro.

The kyiv authorities never admitted that there were soldiers there, but the testimonies interviewed by EL PAÍS at the scene confirmed that there were dozens of soldiers killed.

In March 2022, a few weeks after the start of the invasion, Russia bombed a barracks in the province of Mikolaiv in which between 40 and 100 recruits lost their lives, according to the AFP agency.

The attack in Makiivka coincided with a large-scale Russian attack on kyiv with missiles and drone bombs.

Since the evening of December 31, the Russian air force has relentlessly punished the Ukrainian capital.

The early morning of January 2 was once again filled with anguish and fear in the city with the arrival of more than 20 shahed drones.

The explosions were repeated until after three in the morning.

The vast majority of the unmanned vehicles were shot down by the air defenses, but some hit their targets and the energy network once again suffered damage that caused new power outages on Monday.

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