XPost: sci.military.naval, soc.history.war.misc

So, based on prior truth & accuracy, what do you think,
63 ? or hundreds?

from
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/01/02/world/russia-ukraine-news

Russia-Ukraine War
Russia Admits Dozens of Its Soldiers Are Killed in Ukrainian Strike in East

Here’s what we know:
Russia said it lost 63 soldiers, while Ukraine claimed that 400 Russians
were killed. Even the lower toll would represent one of Moscow’s biggest losses in a single strike.

A Russian proxy official calls the attack in Donetsk a ‘massive blow.’ Russia launches a new round of attacks on the Ukrainian capital.
In his first address of 2023, Zelensky strikes notes of defiance and
gratitude.
Away from the spotlight, Ukraine and Russia trade border fire in rural villages.
A Russian proxy official calls the attack in Donetsk a ‘massive blow.’ Video
0:20
Ukraine Attacks School Housing Russian Soldiers in Donetsk
Video footage shows the aftermath of a Ukrainian missile attack at a
vocational school.CreditCredit...Reuters

Ukrainian forces used U.S.-supplied guided rockets to hit a building
housing Russian soldiers in an occupied eastern city early on New Year’s
Day, both sides said, in one of the deadliest strikes on Moscow’s forces
in the 10-month-old war.

The deaths of at least 60 soldiers, and possibly many more, drew
immediate and harsh criticism in Russia from supporters of the war, who
said that the military was making repeated and costly mistakes,
including housing soldiers in dense numbers within striking distance of Ukrainian weapons.

The Russian Defense Ministry said on Monday that 63 service members had
been killed in the strike in the city, Makiivka, which is in the Donetsk region. Ukraine claimed that “about 400” Russian soldiers had died.
Neither figure could be independently verified.

A spokesman for the Russian-installed proxy government in the Donetsk
region, Daniil Bezsonov, called the strike “a massive blow” and hinted
at errors by Russian commanders.

“The enemy inflicted the most serious defeats in this war on us not
because of their coolness and talent, but because of our mistakes,” he
wrote in a post on Telegram.

Ukraine hit the building housing the soldiers, which both sides
described as a vocational school, using HIMARS, a guided rocket system
supplied by the United States. The system’s range of dozens of miles has
for months helped Ukraine’s forces strike deep behind the front lines,
and it is part of a growing arsenal of sophisticated Western weapons
that have helped change the course of the conflict.

Monday’s strike reflected a shift in Ukrainian tactics with the American-supplied rocket systems, Western military analysts said. Kyiv
has moved from targeting ammunition dumps and supply lines to hitting
barracks and other troop concentrations, said Michael Kofman, the
director of Russian studies at C.N.A., a research institute in
Arlington, Va.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that four HIMARS rockets had hit the building, while two others had been shot down by Russian air defenses.

A former Russian paramilitary commander in Ukraine, Igor Girkin,
confirmed the seriousness of the disaster, writing on Telegram that
“many hundreds” were dead and wounded and that many “remained under the rubble.”

Accounts by pro-war military bloggers — who have become influential opinion-makers in Russia amid the censorship of mainstream media —
suggested that the strike in Makiivka had proved so deadly partly
because of a litany of errors by Moscow’s forces, some of which have
been repeated throughout the war.

Mr. Girkin, also known as Igor Strelkov, said that the vocational school
had been “almost completely destroyed” because “ammunition stored in the same building” detonated in the strike. Video posted on social media
showed firefighters amid the ruins of the structure and piles of
steaming rubble.

The ammunition was stored “without the slightest sign of disguise,” Mr. Girkin wrote, adding that similar strikes had occurred earlier this
year, albeit with fewer casualties. “Our generals are untrainable in principle,” he said.

Many of the soldiers appeared to be new recruits, recently mobilized in President Vladimir V. Putin’s drive to conscript more men into the
fighting in Ukraine. One report in Russian state media said that “active
use of cellular phones by the newly arrived servicemen” had been a prime reason for the attack, helping Ukrainian forces to pinpoint their location.

Throughout the war, Russian soldiers in Ukraine have spoken on open
cellphone lines, often revealing their positions and exposing the
disarray in their ranks. But the military bloggers said that this
official explanation shifted the blame for Makiivka onto the victims,
without explaining why commanders housed so many conscripts in an
unprotected building within reach of U.S.-made rockets.

“No one is assuming the responsibility for the needless deaths,” one blogger, Anastasia Kashevarova, wrote on her Telegram channel.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.

— Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Anatoly Kurmanaev
A U.S.-made long-range rocket system has helped give Ukraine momentum in
the war.
Image
The Ukrainian military firing a rocket from a HIMARS near the frontline
in the Kherson region in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian military firing a rocket from a HIMARS near the frontline
in the Kherson region in Ukraine.Credit...Hannibal Hanschke/EPA, via Shutterstock

In the earliest weeks of the war, President Volodymyr Zelensky of
Ukraine pleaded to any government that would listen that his country was outgunned in the face of Russia’s full-scale invasion. If Ukraine was
going to survive, he said, it needed longer range weapons.

Answering that call in June, Washington delivered the first batch of truck-mounted, multiple-rocket launchers known as HIMARS, which fire satellite-guided rockets with a range of around 50 miles, greater than
anything Ukraine had previously possessed.Since then, these weapons have
helped Ukraine to shift the momentum of the war.

On Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry said that 63 service members
died on New Year’s Day in an attack on a building in Donetsk Province
that local officials installed by Moscow said was carried out using a
HIMARS system. Ukraine’s military confirmed that the American-supplied
system had been used, but said that hundreds had been killed in the attack.

The HIMARS system — the acronym stands for High Mobility Artillery
Rocket System — is most effective when deployed against stationary
targets that can be identified in advance and pinpointed, such as
ammunition dumps, infrastructure, or concentrations of troops. The
United States has so far supplied Ukraine with at least 20 HIMARS
systems, which are made by Lockheed Martin.

Ukrainian forces started to deploy the rocket launchers as part of a
counter offensive launched in the summer to recapture land in the
southern region of Kherson. That territory included the city of Kherson
itself, which lies west of the Dnipro River and fell to Russian forces
when they swept across the Antonivsky Bridge in March.

Starting in late July, Ukrainian forces used the artillery rocket system
to attack the bridge, forcing Moscow to find other routes to resupply
tens of thousands of troops it had stationed in the city. Eventually,
the Kremlin ordered its forces to withdraw from the city in a
significant victory for the government in Kyiv.

“Once they gained an advantage in range and accuracy, they spent their
effort destroying the Russian ability to resist, actually avoiding
direct assaults wherever possible,” said Phillips O’Brien, a professor
of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews, in an analysis of
the war published on Substack. “They patiently destroyed Russian
logistics and command and control, making it impossible for Russia to
maintain forces on the west bank of the Dnipro.”

Military experts say, however, that the U.S.-supplied rocket launchers
are not the only reason for the military gains Ukraine’s forces have
made in recent months. Kyiv was able to drive Russian forces from much
of the Kharkiv Province in the northeast in early September, for
instance, because Moscow had stationed relatively few troops to defend it.

So far, the rocket launchers have not led to big changes to the front
lines in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine where Monday’s deadly
strike on a school being used as a barracks happened. Russia has
controlled much of the territory since 2014 and has significant defenses.

But the rocket launchers have been used to hit other troop
concentrations in the east. Russia’s state news agency, Tass, said in December that a HIMARS struck a hotel in Luhansk Province. Ukrainian authorities said the hotel was a base for Russia’s paramilitary Wagner
Group, which has played a significant role in Moscow’s campaign in Donbas.

Mr. O’Brien argued that weapons like the HIMARS will likely be important
as the war enters its second year.

“The first step of any Ukrainian road to victory will be the
continuation of this great wasting stage we are in, ” he wrote, adding
that Ukraine “will rely mostly on ranged weapons to methodically
dismantle the Russian forces facing them.”

— Matthew Mpoke Bigg
The State of the War
Russian Airstrikes: Ten months into the war, Ukraine has turned the tide
on the ground, but it can do little to stop Russia’s aerial attacks,
even if its air defenses lessen their impact. For Ukrainians, there are
few options but to endure.

Global Starvation: A global food crisis, one of the farthest-reaching consequences of the war, is worsening as winter sets in and Moscow
presses assaults on Ukraine’s infrastructure.

A New Alliance: The United States is scrambling to stop Iran from
producing drones, as officials believe the Middle Eastern nation is
building a partnership with Russia.

Clergymen or Spies?: To Ukraine’s security services, the Russian
Orthodox Church poses a uniquely subversive threat — a trusted
institution that is not only an incubator of pro-Russia sentiment, but
is also infiltrated by priests, monks and nuns who have aided Russia in
the war.

Russia launches a new round of attacks on the Ukrainian capital.
Image
Neighbors helped clear away debris from a site damaged on New Year’s Eve
by Russia strikes in Kyiv, Ukraine. Russia used more exploding drones to
attack the Ukrainian capital early Monday.
Neighbors helped clear away debris from a site damaged on New Year’s Eve
by Russia strikes in Kyiv, Ukraine. Russia used more exploding drones to
attack the Ukrainian capital early Monday.Credit...Laura Boushnak for
The New York Times

KYIV, Ukraine — Russia attacked the Ukrainian capital with exploding
drones early on Monday, officials said, in a follow-up strike to a major
volley of missiles and drones fired over the New Year’s holiday.

An air-raid alert sounded in Kyiv shortly before midnight, and
explosions were heard about an hour later. At least two explosions
echoed through central Kyiv, and reports that drones were in flight came
from the military governor of the Kyiv region, Oleksiy Kuleba, and from
social media users posting in the city of Kropyvnytskyi, south of Kyiv.

Ukrainians have been on edge for days as air-raid sirens wailed,
explosions rang out and debris from shot-down missiles fell on towns and cities.

Russia has been launching Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones, which it began acquiring last summer. The small craft, which can cover hundreds of
miles in flight, explode on impact.

In the latest attack, Mr. Kuleba posted on Telegram, air defense forces
were firing at Shahed drones in areas near the capital.

“Stay in shelters and safe places,” he wrote.

The military said on Monday that 22 drones were shot down over Kyiv.
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said on Telegram that the attacks had
damaged energy infrastructure facilities and affected heating.

Ukraine’s military said it had shot down all 45 exploding drones fired
over the weekend. That volley also included cruise missiles, some of
which hit targets.

— Andrew E. Kramer
In his first address of 2023, Zelensky strikes notes of defiance and
gratitude.
Image
Volodymyr Zelensky has proved adept at rallying support both at home and
abroad over video.
Volodymyr Zelensky has proved adept at rallying support both at home and
abroad over video.Credit...Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters

President Volodymyr Zelensky struck notes of defiance and gratitude in
his nightly address to Ukraine on Sunday, using the platform he
established at the start of the war with Russia to boost the morale of Ukrainian citizens and set the tone for the year ahead.

“They are afraid. You can feel it,” Mr. Zelensky said of Russian forces. “And they are right to be afraid. Because they are losing. Drones,
missiles, anything else will not help them. Because we are together. And
they are together only with fear.”

Mr. Zelensky has proved adept at rallying support both at home and
abroad over video. His first nightly address of 2023 built on the
previous day’s rousing New Year’s Eve message, which recounted the nation’s milestones of grief and triumph over the past year.

He has also met with many politicians and celebrities in Kyiv during the
war, and made a highly publicized visit to Washington less than two
weeks ago, his first trip out of Ukraine since the war started, which
lifted spirits back home.

On Saturday, Russia rained missiles and exploding drones down on Kyiv
and other Ukrainian cities in a New Year’s Eve assault, killing at least
one person and causing crews to pre-emptively shut off electricity.

By Sunday, power had been restored to most of Kyiv’s residents, Vitali Klitschko, the city’s mayor, said in a statement posted on Telegram. But
in the hours after Mr. Zelensky’s Sunday address, Russia attacked the Ukrainian capital again with more exploding drones, which Mr. Klitschko
said damaged energy infrastructure facilities.

Mr. Zelensky made little mention of the previous night’s attack,
focusing his address instead on the will of the public, contrasting
Ukraine’s “sense of unity,” way of life and “authenticity” with those of
Russia.

He also thanked Ukrainian soldiers and utility workers who have been
repairing the country’s battered energy grid.

But he hinted that the resilience that had defined the past 10 months
would have to continue. “It is very important how all Ukrainians
recharged their inner energy this New Year’s Eve,” he said.

— Carly Olson
Away from the spotlight, Ukraine and Russia trade border fire in rural villages.
Image
Destroyed buildings in Trostyanets, in Sumy Province, in June.
Destroyed buildings in Trostyanets, in Sumy Province, in
June.Credit...Alexey Furman/Getty Images

Russian forces struck a rural border region northeast of Ukraine’s
capital with a barrage of artillery and small-arms fire over the
weekend, pressing ahead with an aspect of their campaign that has
attracted less international attention but brought the war to a
vulnerable corner of the country.

The authorities in Sumy Province in northern Ukraine recorded 110 blasts
on Sunday in border districts, according to Dmytro Zhyvytskyi, the head
of the regional military administration. These included three artillery
strikes that landed in Krasnopillia, a border settlement. Russian forces
also fired a grenade launcher and machine guns into another settlement, Seredyna-Buda, where 12 Russian mines exploded. The town abuts Russia’s Bryansk region.

Mr. Zhyvytskyi said that the short-range attacks from across the border
had damaged a school, power lines and a shop but caused no casualties.
They did, however, show the breadth of Moscow’s attacks at a time when
it is also launching missiles, rockets and drones at critical
infrastructure targets from hundreds of miles away.

Russia also launched strikes into five border communities in the region
on Sunday, firing 114 projectiles of various kinds and damaging a church
of St. Barbara, Mr. Zhyvytskyi said.

For months, the warring armies have launched near-daily attacks along
the northern part of the Russia-Ukraine border, according to reports by
local officials on both sides of the frontier.

Casualties have been relatively low, and no ground has changed hands.
But military experts say the border region is significant. The Kremlin
launched its full-scale invasion in February from across northern
Ukraine’s border with Russia as well as from Belarus. Ukrainian forces
drove the Russians back, but since then, border defense has been a vital element of Ukraine’s strategy, not least because President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus ordered his country’s army to assess its combat readiness last month. Belarus has faced pressure to provide further
support to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

At the same time, Ukraine has waged its own cross-border artillery
attacks on Russia, according to Russian officials, including
high-profile strikes by drones at military targets such as airfields
deep inside Russian territory.On Monday, the governor of Russia’s
Bryansk region, Alexander Bogomaz, said that a Ukrainian drone strike
cut power to the border district of Klimovsky. He said later in a
separate post on Telegram, the social messaging app, that backup power
had been switched on at a hospital and boarding school in the district.

Mr. Bogomaz said last Friday that Ukrainian shelling had damaged the
power supply in the border village of Kister.

Ukraine has not acknowledged responsibility for drone strikes into
Russia or confirmed Russian accounts of cross-border shelling, and it is
not possible to confirm individual strikes independently.

On Saturday, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, Vyacheslav
Gladkov, said on Telegram that two houses had been damaged in the town
of Shebekino “as a result of shelling.” He posted photographs of the incident, which could not be independently verified. Earlier, he said
that Russian air defenses had shot down four missiles fired from a
multiple launcher system.

Mr. Gladkov’s posts contain near-daily accounts and photographs of
damage from shelling blamed on the Ukrainians, as well as warnings to
local residents.

A 14-year-old boy in the village of Shchetinovka in Belgorod “stepped on
an unidentified explosive object, causing it to detonate,” he said a
week ago. The boy, whom he did not name, was in critical condition with
face and foot injuries, he said, adding, “Because of the constant
shelling of our border villages, families are taking their children to a
safe distance.”

— Matthew Mpoke Bigg
Putin’s jailed critics offer New Year messages of hope and defiance.
Image
The Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny at a rally in Moscow in
2020. He has been behind bars since early 2021.
The Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny at a rally in Moscow in
2020. He has been behind bars since early 2021.Credit...Shamil
Zhumatov/Reuters

There are now so many jailed opponents of President Vladimir V. Putin
and his full-scale invasion of Ukraine that a new tradition has emerged
in Russia: New Year’s greetings from political prisoners.

Aleksei A. Navalny, the prominent opposition leader who has been behind
bars since early 2021, said that he had received so many seasonal
decorations in letters from supporters that he hung them up in his cell
at his prison outside Moscow. An hour later, the warden took them down,
“but the feeling remained,” he said.

Mr. Navalny’s treatment in prison has worsened, including repeated
stints in solitary confinement, but he still receives visits from
lawyers and is able to get messages out to his supporters.

“The calamity that has befallen our country has brought all normal,
honest people closer together, and it’s not surprising that a connection appears between them,” Mr. Navalny wrote in a post on Instagram on
Saturday, thanking his supporters. “I can feel it.”

The Putin critics’ New Year’s messages are a counterprogramming of sorts
to the traditional year-end speech from the president, who delivered his address on New Year’s Eve surrounded by men and women in uniform. Mr.
Putin vowed to continue his onslaught against Ukraine, asserting that
“moral and historical righteousness is on our side.”

Ilya Yashin, an anti-Kremlin activist and politician who was sentenced
to eight and a half years in prison in December for “spreading false information” about atrocities committed in the Ukrainian city of Bucha
by Russian troops, wrote on Friday that he had been transferred to a
jail in Izhevsk, a city 600 miles east of Moscow.

“I’m OK, friends,” Mr. Yashin wrote. “I want to remind you that the criminal war against Ukraine must be stopped, that Putin must go, and
that Russia must be free and happy.” He added his address in jail to the message, reminding his supporters that they could write to him through
the Russian penitentiary system’s online service.

Mediazona, an independent Russian news outlet, published an article on
Saturday collecting New Year’s greetings from political prisoners.
Aleksei Gorinov, a Moscow lawmaker sentenced in July to seven years in
prison for denouncing the war, wrote that he remained “an optimist who believes in man” because “in Russia there is no other way to live,” and wished for an end “to this useless, crazy war.”

Vladimir Kara-Murza, an activist and journalist under investigation for treason, also struck an optimistic note, though he faces as long as 20
years in prison. “The past year became one of the darkest in the memory
of living generations,” Mr. Kara-Murza wrote. “But the dawn comes after even the darkest night — and it will definitely come.”

— Anton Troianovski
The last hours of 2022 are a ‘usual day’ for Ukrainian soldiers.




Members of Ukraine's 43rd Heavy Artillery Brigade on New Year's Eve, a
"usual day" according to one solider.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New
York Times
Soldiers of Ukraine’s 43rd Heavy Artillery Brigade spent New Year’s Eve near a tree line, some of them chain-smoking as they fired shells toward Russian fortifications inside Kreminna, a key city in the Luhansk
Province that Russian forces have occupied since the summer.

The fighting here has surged recently as the Ukrainian military seeks to
retake Kreminna, a gateway to the much larger cities of Sievierodonetsk
and Lysychansk, two key industrial centers in the Donbas region of
eastern Ukraine.

“Today is a usual day for us,” said a senior battery officer, who asked
to be identified by his code name, Skif, for security reasons. “We’ve
been working since early morning, and we’re waiting for orders to start shooting from the canons and give whatever help our infantry needs on
the ground in Kreminna.”

Skif said his unit was trying to target command posts and Russian
artillery systems.

“The battlefield is a difficult place because there’s a lot of forest
and it’s difficult to fight between trees,” he said. “Artillery systems lose their effectiveness in areas with a lot of forest and trees because
the enemy can hide anywhere.”

Already, Skif said, his unit had targeted destroyed buildings inside the
city, which can be used as cover by Russian forces.

“I suppose the enemy on the ground isn’t very happy with us,” Skif said.

It has been a year of immense loss for Ukraine. But on the last day of
2022, Skif was optimistic that his brigade would be able to take a break
and celebrate a little, a bright moment for exhausted soldiers who have
been fighting for months.

Evelina Riabenko contributed reporting.

— Nicole Tung
Ukraine at war: 2022 in photos.

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