Devastating attack on Russian barracks – in Russia there is horror Legion “Freedom of Russia”: when Russians fight for Ukraine

In Ukraine, the Russian offensive war will continue into the new year. The alleged blitzkrieg turned into a war of attrition, claiming victim after victim on all sides for more than 10 months.

Right at the beginning of the year – on the night of December 31 to January 1 – the Ukrainians staged a major coup against the aggressors: a building in the occupied city of Makiivka in eastern Ukraine was razed to the ground. It was one of the deadliest attacks in Ukraine to date. Dozens to hundreds of Russian soldiers have been killed.

It is a debacle for the Russian military leadership and an embarrassment for Putin. Also because Russian propagandists suddenly criticize the Kremlin’s strategy. That’s what they say:

The official statements

63 Russian soldiers were killed in the occupied city of Makiivka in eastern Ukraine when HIMARS missiles hit a temporary barracks housed in the No. 19 vocational school building, the Russian Defense Ministry reported on Monday.

Russia writes that six missiles were fired by the Ukrainians, but two of the missiles could have been shot down before they hit.

It is an unusual admission for an army that has so far been reluctant to admit heavy casualties.

This approach could indicate that Russia wants to maintain the upper hand in reporting the events, Dara Massicot, a senior political scientist at US think tank Rand Corporation, told the New York Times.

The Ukrainian military, meanwhile, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that “about 400” Russian soldiers died – and “up to 10 units of enemy military equipment” were destroyed.

Neither the number of victims of 63 nor that of “about 400” have been independently verified. But even the lower number would represent one of the worst Russian losses in a single wartime event in war history to date.

Videos circulating on social media and images now verified by news outlets show the ruins of the base. The former huge Soviet-style building is in ruins.

Russia: It was the victims’ own fault

On social media circulates the thesisthat the Russian base could only be identified by the Ukrainians because Ukrainian authorities had detected increased cell phone activity on a local cell tower near the building on New Year’s Eve.

The whole is probably based on a telegram from the Russian state medium TASS. It says that due to the “active use of mobile phones by the newly arrived soldiers”, the Ukrainian armed forces were able to pinpoint the location of the Russians. Some reservists called up as part of the partial mobilization had gathered in the building to celebrate the new year.

The Russian regime thus shifts the blame onto the victims. Even Gray Zone, a Telegram channel linked to the Russian Wagner mercenaries, is outraged by this claim:

It is currently not possible to verify whether the cell phone theory is sound or not – but it wouldn’t be the first time in this war that information has been leaked through unsecured cell phone networks.

Criticism from the Russian ranks

The attack was “a serious blow,” wrote Russian government spokesman in Donetsk, Daniil Bezhonov. And he is penitent:

One accusation from the critics is that people were housed too close to an ammunition depot. The enormous destruction of the building and the human losses are not only due to the HIMARS, but also to the fact that ammunition was stored in the same building where the destroyed barracks were.

So wrote the former separatist leader of the Donetsk region, Igor Girkin, on Telegram hundreds of Russian soldiers ‘still under the rubble’. And he accused the Russian generals of being illegible:

Girkin, the mastermind behind the downing of flight MA17, is now known as a critic of Putin. However, he is not anti-war.

In addition to these voices from the occupied territories, there are several Russian nationalist bloggers who are very influential due to their large following. In Russia, they have become a popular source of information about the fighting in Ukraine. The bloggers are often leaked images or battle reports that journalists (independent and Russian) do not have access to.

And some of these bloggers are now publicly calling for the commanders in Donetsk to be punished for housing soldiers next to an ammunition depot. АРХАНГЕЛ СПЕЦНАЗА Z (“Archangel Special Forces Z”) wrote to his 700,000 followers on Telegram:

The “archangel” thus insinuates that the Russian commanders accepted the soldiers’ deaths when they placed them in vocational school “even though they knew they were within range of Ukrainian missiles”. The blogger concludes that the Kremlin failed to send “smart commanders” to Ukraine.

Wladlen Tatarsky was even more explicit. The military blogger, who was photographed with Putin in the Kremlin in September, made a claim on Telegram “Tribunal for the Russian Military Command” and called Moscow’s top officers “inexperienced idiots”.

In another post, Tatarsky chides the commanders for not housing the soldiers in underground chambers. He asks:

Andrey Medvedev, a journalist loyal to the Kremlin and deputy chairman of the Moscow city parliament, blows the same trumpet:

In his New Year’s speech, broadcast just hours before the attack, Putin vowed to correct the glaring flaws and weaknesses in his armed forces exposed by the war. In line with this development, the Ministry of Defense writes: “The relatives and friends of the fallen soldiers receive all necessary help and support.”

The journalist Alexander Nezorov – who is currently under criminal trial for his repeated criticism of the war – does not believe the words of the Kremlin. He vividly described why it will probably never be conclusively clarified how many soldiers actually died in Makiivka under the rubble of the vocational school:

(yum)