Samara, Russia, Jan 3 (AFP/APP):Mourners voiced grief and anger on Tuesday at a rare public commemoration in Russia for the scores of soldiers killed by a Ukrainian strike on New Year’s Eve.
Admitting its worst ever military losses from a single Ukrainian attack, Russia on Monday said 63 servicemen were killed when a temporary deployment point was struck in Makiivka, a town in the eastern region of Donetsk partially held by separatists since 2014.
Ukraine has taken responsibility for the strike and says the toll could be much higher. Russian bloggers say many of the victims were reservists recently mobilised into the army.
Much of the criticism was focused on the incompetence of Russia’s top brass and not President Vladimir Putin who sent troops to Ukraine on February 24 last year.
Some 200 people laid roses and wreaths in a central square in the city of Samara — where some of the servicemen came from — as an Orthodox priest recited a prayer.
Soldiers also fired a gun salute at the commemoration, where some of the mourners could be seen holding flags for the ruling United Russia party.
“It’s very tough, it’s scary. But we cannot be broken. Grief unites,” Ekaterina Kolotovkina, head of a group of army spouses, said at the ceremony.
Similar gatherings were reported in other cities of the Samara region including Tolyatti, home to Russia’s largest carmaker AvtoVAZ.
– ‘Criminally naive’ –
The deaths sparked heavy criticism in Russia of the army’s senior command, including from nationalist commentators favourable to the military intervention in Ukraine.
Russian military correspondents, who have gained influence in recent months, said hundreds could have been killed and accused Russia’s top commanders of incompetence.
There have also been reports that the servicemen were quartered next to a munitions depot which exploded in the strike and that some had been able to use their Russian mobile phones — giving away their location to Ukrainian forces.
“What conclusions will be drawn? Who will be punished?” Mikhail Matveyev, a member of the Russian parliament representing Samara, wrote on social media.
The Telegram account Rybar, which has around a million followers, said it was “criminally naive” for the army to store ammunition next to sleeping quarters.
Putin had yet to react to the Makiivka strike, which comes during a holiday season before Orthodox Christmas which many Russians spend with their families.
– Call for revenge –
At the gathering in Samara, Kolotovkina, the wife of a general, said she had asked her husband to “avenge” the victims.
“We will crush the enemy together. We are left with no choice,” she told mourners.
A little-known group, dubbed Soldiers’ Widows of Russia, urged Putin to announce general mobilisation.
The defence ministry said the strike was carried out by Himars rocket systems supplied to Ukraine by the United States.
These systems have allowed Ukrainian forces to strike much deeper into Russian-held territory and have been credited for a series of battlefield reversals for Russia in recent months.
Ukraine said it had faced waves of Russian drone and missile attacks since New Year’s Eve, mainly targeting energy and other critical infrastructure.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had spoken by phone with the leaders of Britain, Norway and the Netherlands and pointed to “the risks of escalation at the front”.
The Russian defence ministry said its strikes on the town of Maslyakivka and the city of Kramatorsk in the east killed more than 130 “foreign mercenaries”.
Russian strikes on the town of Druzhkivka in Donetsk killed one person and destroyed an ice rink, said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of Zelensky’s office.
The hardest fighting is raging around the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine — a location with little strategic importance that Russian forces led by the mercenary group Wagner have been trying to capture for months.
Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman close to Putin, admitted in an interview that the fighting was tough and claimed Ukrainian forces had turned “each house into a fortress”.
Prigozhin told state news agency RIA Novosti in the interview on Tuesday that his men were sometimes fighting “several weeks for a single house”.
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