Flowers and prayers: Rallies were held in Russia on Tuesday to commemorate dozens of soldiers killed in a strike in eastern Ukraine, a shock that sparked a wave of criticism of the army.
• Also read: What we know about the deadly Makiivka strike in Ukraine
• Also read: Ukraine: 63 Russian soldiers killed in strike near Donetsk
Unusually in Russia, where authorities remain discreet about military casualties in Ukraine, around 200 people gathered with the authorities’ consent in Samara (centre), where some of the soldiers killed were from.
Some laid flowers in front of an eternal flame in one of the city’s main squares before bowing respectfully, an AFP correspondent saw.
According to local media, rallies were also held in other cities in the region, most notably in Togliatti and Syzran.
In a rare admission, Russia’s Defense Ministry on Monday admitted that 63 soldiers had died in a Ukrainian strike on New Year’s Eve on a building in Makiivka, a Russian-occupied town in the Donetsk region that Moscow claims to have annexed. Kyiv has a much higher record.
These losses, among the heaviest Moscow has suffered in a single attack since the February 24 offensive against Ukraine began, have drawn criticism from nationalist commentators who nonetheless advocate military intervention.
The excitement was compounded by the fact that the soldiers killed were mobilized reservists.
“Revenge”
“I haven’t slept for three days,” said Samara Ekaterina Kolotovkina, wife of a Russian general and president of a women’s committee close to the army, during the ceremony.
“For the first time since the beginning of the military special operation, I (my husband) have asked for revenge, for mothers’ tears, for heartbroken widows, for orphans,” she added.
On Telegram on Monday, a group claiming to be made up of Russian “soldier widows” called on Vladimir Putin to launch a “large-scale mobilization” to “save” Russia.
The Russian president himself has not yet responded to the attack in Makiivka, which was announced in the middle of the Orthodox Christmas holiday week, a traditionally joyful time for Russians to meet family.
Only on Tuesday did the Kremlin announce that it had ordered a report from Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on the state of the equipment of Russian troops in Ukraine and on the “measures” to be taken to strengthen them.
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According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the missiles that hit Makiivka were fired from HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, a weapon supplied to Ukrainian forces by the United States.
Following Moscow’s defeats in recent months in Kharkiv (northeast) and Kherson (south), which sparked criticism of the Russian military leadership, this slaughter has sparked a new peak in anger and calls for punishment for those responsible.
“What conclusions are drawn? Who will be punished?” began Mikhail Matveyev, the communist deputy elected in Samara.
Several commentators in favor of military intervention, who were widely followed on social media, protested in particular at the possibility of ammunition being stored in the same building where the soldiers were housed.
The Telegram account Rybar – which has more than a million subscribers – therefore criticized the “criminal naivety” that led to them being placed next to this ammunition depot.
Others pointed out that the military was housed in an ordinary, unprotected building and complained that information on the whereabouts of Russian soldiers, in particular the geolocation of their phones, regularly reached the Ukrainian army.
“Every House is a Fortress”
For their part, Ukrainians said they had faced multiple attacks since the New Year.
On Monday, Kyiv came under renewed fire from Iranian-made drones, but most of them were shot down, authorities said. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed his army had destroyed more than 80 planes in total.
On Monday evening, the governor of the Kharkiv region (northeast) Oleg Synegoubov pointed out that the second largest city in Ukraine and its region had been the target of Russian missiles.
However, the fiercest fighting is taking place around the town of Bakhmout (east), which has no real strategic importance but which Russian forces led by the Wagner mercenary group have been trying to take for months.
The head of this organization, Evguéni Prigojine, a businessman close to Vladimir Putin, admitted that the situation there is difficult.
Sometimes his men “fight for weeks to[take]a house,” he said in an interview with Russia’s Ria-Novosti news agency published on Tuesday.