Russia attributes missile attack to soldiers using their phones

According to Russia, soldiers were using their mobile phones when a new year's missile attack that killed at least 89 Russian soldiers occurred.

According to officials, using illegal phones helped the enemy find its target. There is already an investigation underway.

Ukraine claimed the attack on a conscription college in Makiivka, in the occupied Donetsk region, resulted in 400 troops being killed and another 300 being injured.

It is the most fatalities that Russia has reported during the conflict.

At 00:01 Moscow time on January 1st, six rockets from a US-made Himars rocket system were fired at a vocational college, two of which were shot down, according to Russia.

Vladimir Putin, had just finished delivering his yearly new year’s speech on Russian television.

Lt Col Bachurin, the regiment’s deputy commander, was one among those slain, the ministry of defence announced in a statement on Wednesday.

According to the statement, a panel was looking into the incident’s circumstances.

Although it was forbidden, the presence and “mass use” of mobile phones by troops within range of Ukrainian weaponry was “already evident” to be the primary cause of the strike, it added. 

Officials found to be at fault by the investigation would be prosecuted, according to Lt. Gen. Sergei Sevryukov, and “all essential steps are currently being taken to prevent this kind of terrible tragedy in the future.”

It was expected that the soldiers would be blamed rather than the commander who made the initial decision to put so many of them in one spot, according to Andrei Medvedev, the deputy speaker of the municipal parliament in Moscow.

The defence ministry’s declaration that military personnel who are supposedly to blame for this disaster will face punishment will be interpreted as an effort to placate the public’s outrage over the Makiivka disaster while also placing the burden squarely on the military and away from President Putin. 

He still hasn’t responded to the disaster so far. 

The Kremlin has taken care to keep the Russian president away from any negative reports received from the front lines throughout this conflict.

Russia’s withdrawal from Kherson in southern Ukraine in November marked a significant strategic setback for Moscow. 

Gen Sergei Surovikin, the commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, however, gave the order to retreat. 

Meanwhile, pictured inspecting a hospital for neurological disorders, President Putin remained silent about the situation in Kherson.

On Tuesday evening, Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, issued a warning that Moscow was “on the verge of new mobilisation processes.”

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