Monitoring Desk
KYIV: The defense ministry of Russia said Monday that 63 Russian soldiers had been killed when a Ukrainian rocket struck a facility in the eastern Donetsk area where military personnel was stationed. Ukrainian troops fired six rockets from a HIMARS launch system.
Using a US-supplied powerful weapon that has proven vital in enabling Ukraine’s forces to hit critical targets, the strike delivered a new setback for Russia, which has reeled from a Ukrainian counter-offensive in recent months.
The Ukrainian military refrained from directly confirming the strike but tacitly acknowledged the rocket strike. Ukraine’s Armed Forces’ Strategic Communications Directorate claimed on Sunday that nearly 400 mobilized Russian soldiers were killed in Makiivka in a vocational school building, and around 300 more were injured.
Ukrainian rocket strike hits vocational school
However, the Russian claim could not be verified independently. The Russian statement claimed the strike occurred “in Makiivka” and did not mention the vocational school.
Meanwhile, Russia deployed several exploding drones in another night-time strike on Ukraine, said officials on Monday, as Russia signalled no let-up in its strategy of using bombardments to target Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and beat Ukrainian resistance against its invasion.
The attack was the latest in a series of relentless year-end strikes, including one that killed three civilians on New Year’s Eve.
On Monday, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said 40 drones headed for Kyiv overnight. All the drones were destroyed, according to Ukraine’s air defense forces.
Klitschko said 22 drones were destroyed over Kyiv, three in the outlying Kyiv region and 15 over neighbouring provinces.
The mayor said that energy infrastructure facilities were damaged due to the attack, and an explosion occurred in one city district. It wasn’t immediately clear whether drones or other munitions caused that. Klitschko said an injured 19-year-old man was hospitalized, and emergency power outages were underway in Kyiv.
In the outlying Kyiv region, a significant infrastructure object and residential buildings were targeted, Governor Oleksiy Kuleba said.
Since October, Russia has launched airstrikes on Ukrainian power and water supplies almost weekly.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has claimed that Russia is committing energy terrorism as the aerial bombardments have left several people without heat amid freezing temperatures. Ukrainian officials say Russia is “weaponizing winter” to demoralize the Ukrainian forces’ resistance.
