Russia is angry at the Ukraine war deadly strike

(Reuters) – Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zilenskiy claimed that Russia would call up additional troops for a major offensive. However, Moscow was facing its most severe internal criticisms of the war due to a strike that resulted in the deaths of scores of new conscripts.

MAKIIVKA STRIKE

* Russia’s defence ministry said 89 servicemen were killed on New Year’s Eve in a Ukrainian attack on a barracks in Makiivka in a Moscow-controlled part of the Donetsk region, up from an earlier estimate of 63. The death toll may be higher according to some pro-war bloggers in Russia and Ukraine.

* The Russian Defence Ministry pinned the blame for the strike on soldiers it said had been illegally using mobile phones, which it said led Ukraine to locate the Makiivka base.

FIGHTING

* The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said Russia had launched seven missile strikes, 18 air strikes and more than 85 attacks from multiple-launch rocket systems in the past 24 hours on civilian infrastructure in three cities, Kramatorsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Reuters could not confirm the battlefield reports.

* A little known patriotic group claiming to support widows of Russian soldiers has called on President Vladimir Putin to order a large-scale mobilisation of millions of men and to close Russia’s borders to prevent them fleeing conscription.

* Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol in Crimea, said on Wednesday on the Telegram messaging app that air defence systems had shot down two drones near the Belbek military airfield.

* Combing the battlefields of eastern Ukraine, volunteers have made it their mission to search for bodies of fallen soldiers and return them to families.

DIPLOMACY

* Putin plans to talk to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday, the Kremlin spokesman was quoted as saying.

* Germany is looking for further ways to help Ukraine to protect its people and infrastructure, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said, stressing that any dip in Europe’s resolve on the issue would serve as a boon to Moscow.

QUOTES

“We have no doubt that the current masters of Russia will throw everything they have left and everyone they can round up to try to turn the tide of the war and at least delay their defeat,” Zelenskiy spoke in his nightly address via video.

(Compiled by Gareth Jones

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