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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
Similar gatherings were reported in other cities of the Samara region including Tolyatti, home to Russia’s largest carmaker AvtoVAZ.<\/p>\n
– ‘Criminally naive’ –<\/p>\n
The deaths sparked heavy criticism in Russia of the army’s senior command, including from nationalist commentators favourable to the military intervention in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Russian military correspondents, who have gained influence in recent months, said hundreds could have been killed and accused Russia’s top commanders of incompetence.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“What conclusions will be drawn? Who will be punished?” Mikhail Matveyev, a member of the Russian parliament representing Samara, wrote on social media.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
– Call for revenge –<\/p>\n
At the gathering in Samara, Kolotovkina, the wife of a general, said she had asked her husband to “avenge” the victims.<\/p>\n
“We will crush the enemy together. We are left with no choice,” she told mourners.<\/p>\n
A little-known group, dubbed Soldiers’ Widows of Russia, urged Putin to announce general mobilisation.<\/p>\n
The defence ministry said the strike was carried out by Himars rocket systems supplied to Ukraine by the United States.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Ukraine said it had faced waves of Russian drone and missile attacks since New Year’s Eve, mainly targeting energy and other critical infrastructure.<\/p>\n
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”.<\/p>\n
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”.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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”.<\/p>\n
Prigozhin told state news agency RIA Novosti in the interview on Tuesday that his men were sometimes fighting “several weeks for a single house”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n
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