By Mithil Aggarwal -
NBC News
Russia's Defense Ministry said Monday that Ukraine killed 63 Russian servicemen using US-supplied artillery to hit a base in an occupied part of the country on New Year's Eve.
The soldiers died after four HIMARS (acronym for High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) warheads hit a "provisional base," the Ministry of Defense explained in a message posted on the Telegram messaging platform.
Two shells were shot down, it added.
Anatolii Kaharlytskyi, 73, near his badly damaged home after a Russian attack in kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Jan. 2, 2023. Renata Brito / AP
A senior Russian official in the occupied city of Donetsk had previously said that "a vocational training school" in the city of Makiivka had been hit by US-supplied HIMARS.
"A significant number of dead and injured," Daniil Bezsonov advanced in a message on Telegram on Sunday night.
Although Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for the attack, its Armed Forces posted a cryptic message on Telegram on Sunday night.
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"As a result of 'careless handling of heating devices', neglecting security measures and smoking in an unspecified location, Santa [Claus] bagged some 400 Russian military corpses," they announced.
"Some 300 more people have injuries of varying severity," they added.
NBC News, sister network to Noticias Telemundo, was unable to verify the claims by either party.
A group of people next to the place where a Russian attack took place in kyiv, Ukraine, on Monday, January 2, 2023. Renata Brito / AP
The leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, Denis Pushilin, said on Sunday that many civilian facilities had come under Ukrainian fire on New Year's Eve, according to the Russian news agency TASS.
Bezsonov criticized "the massive deployment of personnel, which, according to him, contributed to the casualties.
Russian forces have also been shelling cities across Ukraine in recent days, launching missile and drone attacks on key civilian infrastructure.
During the night from Sunday to Monday, kyiv, the capital, was attacked with Iranian-made drones.
The city's mayor, Vitali Klitschko, stated that 22 were destroyed over kyiv, three in the kyiv outlying region and 15 over neighboring provinces.
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“As a result of the night shelling of the capital, energy infrastructure facilities were damaged.
There are emergency power cuts in the city," Klitschko said on Telegram on Sunday night.
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Power infrastructure facilities were damaged as a result of the attack and an explosion occurred in a district of the city, the mayor said.
It is unknown if it was due to drones or other munitions.
The mayor claimed that an injured 19-year-old was hospitalized and that the city was suffering from power outages.
Since October, Russia has carried out airstrikes against electricity and water supplies on an almost weekly basis.