Russia claims fatal retaliatory strike Ukraine denies happened
Mike Brest
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Russian forces claimed to have killed hundreds of Ukrainian troops this weekend in response to a recent mass casualty event Ukrainians conducted against them, but there’s scant evidence Moscow’s strike actually happened.
A Russian spokesperson described “a massive missile strike” killing more than 600 Ukrainian service members in Kramatorsk, state-run news outlet TASS reported.
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“Over the past day, Russian intelligence means detected and reliably confirmed through various independent channels some temporary bases of Ukrainian servicemen in Kramatorsk,” Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Lt. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said. “As a result of a massive missile strike on these temporary bases of Ukrainian units, more than 600 Ukrainian servicemen were killed.”
Serhii Cherevatyi, a spokesman for the Eastern Group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, told CNN that the supposed strike was “nonsense.”
A CNN team in the area did not see any indication of a mass casualty event in the Kramatorsk area, while a Reuters team also found no obvious signs of such an attack. Kramatorsk’s mayor told Reuters that there were no casualties.
A senior U.S. defense official could not confirm or definitively say the strike didn’t occur when asked by a reporter during a background briefing on Monday.
The alleged Russian strike was in retaliation for a Ukrainian airstrike that hit a Russian provisional military base near Makeevka, in the Donetsk region, killing between dozens and hundreds of Russian soldiers at the start of the year. The Russian Defense Ministry said the death toll was 89, while the Ukrainian armed forces said at least 400 Russian soldiers were killed and another 300 wounded.
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The Russian Ministry claimed that soldiers’ use of personal cellphones against the rules allowed the Ukrainians to track and uncover their location prior to the strike.
“Circumstances of the incident are currently being investigated by a commission,” First Deputy Chief of the Main Military-Political Directorate of the Armed Forces of Russia Lt. Gen. Sergei Sevryukov said on Telegram. “But it is already obvious that the main reason, despite the restriction, was turning on and massive use of mobile phones by the personnel within the range area of enemy firepower. This factor allowed the enemy to locate the personnel for launching the missile strike.”
Russian military leaders said the Ukrainians used a U.S.-provided High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, in the attack.