Russia blames Makiivka missile attack on soldiers’ phones use

• Ukrainian rocket attack kills at least 89 Russian soldiers on January 1st.
• 400 Ukrainian servicemen killed in Makiivka, Donetsk area.
• “Relevant officials” being prosecuted meant something went wrong.

A new year’s rocket attack that killed at least 89 Russian soldiers occurred because servicemen disobeyed a rule by using mobile phones, according to Russia.

According to officials, the enemy was able to find its target by turning on the phones and using them in large numbers.

According to Ukraine, the attack on a conscription college in Makiivka, in the occupied Donetsk region, resulted in 400 troops being killed and another 300 being injured.

It is the most fatalities that Russia has reported during the conflict.

At 00:01 Moscow time on January 1st, six rockets from a US-made Himars rocket system were fired at a technical institution, two of which were shot down, according to Russia.

Vladimir Putin, the president, had just finished delivering his yearly new year’s speech on Russian television.

Lt Col Bachurin, the regiment’s deputy commander, was one among those slain, the ministry of defense announced in a statement on Wednesday.

According to the statement, a panel was looking into the incident’s circumstances.

The use of mobile phones by troops within range of Ukrainian weaponry, despite this being prohibited, was “already evident” to be the primary cause of the attack, it was noted.

“This factor allowed the enemy to locate and determine the co-ordinates of the location of military personnel for a missile strike.”

Lt Gen Sergei Sevryukov said officials found responsible by the investigation would be brought to justice and “all the necessary measures are currently being adopted to prevent this kind of tragic incident in the future”.

The remark from the defense ministry caught our attention for two reasons.

The current official death toll for the military is 89. The previous death toll of 63 marked the largest single death toll Moscow had acknowledged since the war’s inception.

Both Ukraine and unofficial Russian sources assert that there may have been a lot more people killed in Makiivka than has been reported.

Second, it implied that something went wrong by stating that “relevant officials” will be prosecuted. This is rather unusual behavior for Moscow because the government rarely acknowledges its mistakes.

Soldiers who were reportedly among the 300,000 called up during President Vladimir Putin’s partial mobilization in September filled the vocational college at the time.

In close proximity to the site, which was in ruins, ammunition was also kept.

Denis Pushilin, the president of Russia’s proxy government in the Donetsk area, lauded the bravery of individuals who were hit by the missile attack and tried to rescue fellow workers from the structure.

He continued by saying that several people who were going back to the building had passed away.

One could anticipate that the most important subject on Russian state TV news today would be the most recent report from the Russian military on the terrible events in Makiivka, given the high official death toll.

Not so. The story hardly received a mention in this morning’s major bulletins of Rossiya-24.

The defense ministry statement was briefly mentioned on Channel One’s main news show, but it was buried at the end of a story about purported victories on the front lines and losses among Ukrainian, not Russian, soldiers.

“A whole series of Russian missile attacks was unleashed on the first days of the new year against Ukrainian nationalists and foreign accomplices of the Kyiv regime,” said the Channel One correspondent triumphantly, using common false narratives to describe Ukrainian forces.

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