Ukraine war: Russia traces Ukraine’s deadly New Year day missile attack to mobile phone
Photo: Mourners gather to lay flowers in memory of soldiers killed in Makiivka
Russia has said a new year missile attack that killed at least 89 Russian soldiers happened because troops were using mobile phones, defying a ban.
According to BBC.com turning on the phones and massive use of them allowed the enemy to locate its target, officials said.
Ukraine says 400 soldiers were killed – and another 300 wounded – in the attack on a college for conscripts in Makiivka, in the occupied Donetsk area.
It is the largest number of deaths Russia has acknowledged in the war.
Russia said that at 00:01 Moscow time on New Year’s Day, six rockets were fired from a US-made Himars rocket system at a vocational college, two of which were shot down. Moments earlier President Vladimir Putin had given his annual new year address on Russian TV.
The deputy commander of the regiment, Lt Col Bachurin, was among those killed, the ministry of defence said in a statement on Wednesday. A commission was investigating the circumstances of the incident, the statement said.
But it was “already obvious” that the main cause of the attack was the use of mobile phones by troops in range of Ukrainian weapons, despite this being banned, it added.
“This factor allowed the enemy to locate and determine the co-ordinates of the location of military personnel for a missile strike.”
Lt Gen Sergei Sevryukov said officials found responsible by the investigation would be brought to justice and “all the necessary measures are currently being adopted to prevent this kind of tragic incident in the future”.