MOSCOW – Kyiv swiftly refuted Russian claims that it had launched a devastating “retaliatory strike” in eastern Ukraine on Sunday to exact revenge for a recent deadly attack on its troops.
According to a statement from the Russian defence ministry, a missile attack on troops stationed in two buildings used as barracks in Kramatorsk resulted in “more than 600 Ukrainian military killed.”
Following Ukraine’s New Year’s Eve missile barrage in the eastern Ukrainian town of Makiivka, which Moscow claimed resulted in the deaths of 89 of its soldiers, Russia branded the action as a “retaliatory strike.”
The Kramatorsk strike was not what Russia claimed, according to Ukraine’s armed forces.
According to Sergiy Cherevaty, spokesman for the eastern division of the Ukrainian armed forces, “this information is as real as the fact that they have destroyed all of our HIMARS.”
Ukraine employed HIMARS missiles supplied by the US in the attack on Makiivka.
Cherevaty claimed that Moscow was unable to carry out highly precise strikes.
More than 1,300 Ukrainian soldiers were discovered in two buildings in Kramatorsk, according to Russian intelligence, but the specific timing of the strike was not stated in the statement.
Kremlin missile assaults on the industrial city in the eastern Donetsk region have occurred often.
Russian blasts before midnight
Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the Donetsk regional administration, had earlier on Sunday claimed that seven missile assaults had been made on Kramatorsk by Kremlin forces “after midnight.”
He said that no one had been hurt, but “an educational institution, an industrial facility, and a garage cooperative” had been harmed.
In the attack, rockets from Ukraine hit a Makiivka structure that was being utilised as a barracks.
Russia acknowledged that 89 soldiers had died, the greatest single documented loss from a Ukrainian hit since the conflict started in February of last year. However, a statement from the Ukrainian military stated that more than 400 soldiers had perished.
In order to allow Orthodox Christians to observe Christmas, which was observed on Saturday in Russia and Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin issued a 36-hour ceasefire.
