Russia’s defense ministry said Monday that 63 Russian soldiers have been killed by a Ukrainian strike on a facility in the eastern Donetsk region where military personnel was stationed. Ukrainian forces fired six rockets from a HIMARS launch system and two of them were shot down, a Russian defense ministry statement.
The strike, using a U.S.-supplied precision weapon that has proven critical in enabling Ukrainian forces to hit key targets, delivered a new setback for Russia which in recent months has reeled from a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
The Ukrainian military has not directly confirmed the strike, but tacitly acknowledged it. The Strategic Communications Directorate of Ukraine’s Armed Forces claimed Sunday that some 400 mobilized Russian soldiers were killed in a vocational school building in Makiivka and about 300 more were wounded. That claim could not be independently verified. The Russian statement said the strike occurred “in the area of Makiivka” and didn’t mention the vocational school. Meanwhile, Russia deployed multiple exploding drones in another nighttime attack on Ukraine, officials said Monday, as the Kremlin signaled no letup in its strategy of using bombardments to target the country’s energy infrastructure and wear down Ukrainian resistance to its invasion. AP
