7.10 a.m .: Critics are piling up in Russia after the deadly Makiivka strike
Critics have been mounting in Russia after the New Year’s Eve crackdown on Russian soldiers in Makiivka in eastern Ukraine, in which Moscow put the death toll at 89 and accused the military of using cellphones. According to Russian General Sergei Sevriukov, the “main cause” of the strike is “the massive use of mobile phones by staff” despite the ban, which allowed Ukrainian forces to locate this concentration of Russian soldiers.
According to the Russian media, the victims were mobilized, i.e. lay soldiers. The head of the RT station, the spearhead of international Kremlin propaganda, Margarita Simonian, called for the names of the Russian officers involved to be published and for “measures to be taken on their accountability”. “It is time to understand that impunity does not lead to social harmony. Impunity leads to new crimes. And therefore public dissent,” she wrote on Telegram. “It’s not the cell phones and their owners that are to blame, but the banal negligence of the commanders, who certainly didn’t even try to move the staff out of the building,” the group fumed. “Notes from a Veteran” on Telegram, which has 200,000 subscribers.