Ukraine rejects Russia’s claim that more than 600 soldiers were killed in retaliation

Kyiv:

Russia said on Sunday it had launched a devastating “retaliatory strike” in eastern Ukraine in revenge for a recent deadly attack on its troops, a claim Kyiv quickly rejected.

A Russian Defense Ministry statement said “more than 600 Ukrainian soldiers were killed” in a missile attack on troops stationed in two buildings used as barracks in Kramatorsk.

Russia described the attack as a “retaliatory strike” following a missile attack on Ukraine’s eastern city of Makiivka on Ukrainian New Year’s Eve, which Moscow said killed 89 of its soldiers.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine rejected Russia’s claim about the Kramatorsk attack.

“The information is as true as data that they destroyed all our Himars,” Sergiy Cherevaty, spokesman for the Eastern Group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, told the Saspilin media outlet. In the attack on Makiivka, Ukraine used Himars missiles supplied by the US.

Cherevati said that Russia could not deliver accurate strikes.

The Russian statement did not say when exactly the strike took place – only that Russian intelligence had detected more than 1,300 Ukrainian soldiers in two buildings in Kramatorsk “over the past 24 hours”.

The industrial city, in the eastern Donetsk region, has been the target of repeated Russian missile attacks.

four blasts before midnight

Earlier on Sunday, Pavlo Kirilenko, head of the Donetsk regional administration, said Russian forces had fired seven rockets at Kramatorsk “after midnight”.

He added that “an educational institution, an industrial facility and a garage cooperative” had been damaged and that there were no casualties.

AFP could not independently verify the situation. On Saturday, Orthodox Christmas in Kramatorsk, AFP reporters heard at least four explosions just before midnight.

In the Ukrainian attack, its missiles hit a building in Makievka being used as a barracks.

While Russia acknowledged that 89 soldiers had died, the worst losses from the Ukrainian attack since the start of the war last February, a statement by Ukraine’s military claimed that losses exceeded 400. Is.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a 36-hour ceasefire to allow Orthodox Christians to mark Christmas, which was celebrated in Russia and Ukraine on Saturday.

Ukrainian officials, who dismissed the ceasefire as a cynical propaganda move, said Russia had not respected it in any case.

In his evening address on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned “the Russian shelling of Kherson with incendiary ammunition right after Christmas” in the southeast.

“Civilian objects were targeted in Kramatorsk and other cities in the Donbass, and at precisely the same time that Moscow was reporting on the alleged ‘silence’ of the military,” he added.

Putin’s unilateral ceasefire 2100 GMT Saturday: 11:00 p.m. in Kyiv, but ends at midnight in Moscow.

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