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.”