Moscow said a Ukrainian airstrike hit army barracks in the Russian-occupied town of Makeevka in eastern Ukraine, killing at least 63 people, as it continued to target Kyiv with drones.
Four high-explosive warheads hit the Makeevka Temporary Deployment Base, while two were shot down by Russian air defenses, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Monday. The school building, which was used as a barracks, was located near an ammunition and weapons depot.
Russian military bloggers said hundreds of newly mobilized Russian soldiers had died or gone missing. While not taking credit for the strike, the Ukrainian military suggested in a Telegram post that the Makeevka attack killed 400 Russian soldiers and wounded 300.
Bloggers described the event as a disaster and called for the commanders who made the decision to house such a large number of troops in an unprotected building to be punished.
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The airstrike shows the damage that Western-supplied Himars missiles can inflict on Russian forces, which were forced to retreat in the face of a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the east and south last year. But it also highlights poor tactical judgment by Russian military commanders, analysts say.
Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the US-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, commented on Twitter: “One of the problems with relying on mobilized troops is that it is harder to disperse them because of the lack of leadership of small units. . . But placing them next to an ammunition depot is simply a failure of leadership.
Meanwhile, Russia extended a three-day series of attacks on Ukraine’s civilian and military infrastructure by launching 39 drones at the capital on Monday morning. All drones have been destroyed, the Air Force of Ukraine said. “Anti-aircraft missile units, Air Force fighter jets and mobile fire groups were involved in covering the attack,” the statement said.
Since October, Russia has carried out regular airstrikes against Ukrainian infrastructure as its ground military operation stalled following Ukrainian counter-offensives.
However, Russia’s airstrikes have become less frequent in intensity as Moscow has begun to deplete its stockpile of cruise missiles, according to military officials. In a change of tactics that sought to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses, Moscow turned instead to Iranian-supplied drones, which are cheaper to use but easier to shoot down.
“Russia has enough missiles left for two massive strikes on Ukraine,” Ukrainian intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said in a wide-ranging interview at the end of the year on Ukrainian television. “They are reducing the number to [maintain] the intensity of these missile attacks.”
A Western-supplied air defense system, known as NASAM, has been central to the defense of the capital, according to Ukraine’s air force. Western countries have large stockpiles of the Aim-120 missiles that NASAM uses, but they cost about $1 million each, compared to the less than $20,000 price tag for Iran-supplied Shahed drones.
Ukraine is also reported to have carried out two drone attacks on Russian territory overnight.
Alexander Bogomaz, the governor of Russia’s Bryansk region, said a “Ukrainian drone” damaged a power supply facility in the Klimov region, about 100 km from the border with Ukraine, in the early hours of January 2.
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Ukrainian kamikaze drones also reportedly bombed Baltimore’s military airport in Voronezh, another 100 miles away in Russia, according to social media reports.
The attack, unconfirmed by Ukrainian authorities, follows the pattern of other recent cross-border drone strikes against Russian military facilities.
Ukrainian officials have refrained from commenting on such strikes, such as the dramatic attack in early December at Engels Airport near Saratov in southern Russia, about 600 km from the border with Ukraine.
But Budanov, who heads Ukraine’s military intelligence, said in a recent interview that while he would not confirm that Ukraine was striking air bases in Russia, he believed those strikes would likely “move deeper and deeper ” in the country.
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