During the shelling of the vocational school building in Makeyevka on New Year’s Eve, HIMARS systems killed 89 Russian servicemen, the Russian Defense Ministry said. Earlier it was known regarding 63 dead. The ministry cited the use of mobile phones by the military as the reason for the incident. The Ministry of Defense promised to bring to justice the officials responsible for the death of Russian soldiers.
Among the dead was the deputy commander of the regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Bachurin. As a result, according to the lieutenant general, the ceilings of the building collapsed. Sergei Sevryukov said that “all available measures” were taken to save the victims. The Defense Ministry said the HIMARS launcher, from which Ukrainian troops hit Makiivka, was destroyed by return fire.
As Lieutenant-General Sergey Sevryukov, First Deputy Head of the Main Military-Political Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces, told at a briefing, two HIMARS shells intercepted air defense systems, four shells with a high-explosive fragmentation warhead might not be intercepted, they hit the vocational school building.
On January 1, DPR Deputy Information Minister Daniil Bezsonov said that on New Year’s Eve, the Ukrainian armed forces launched a HIMARS missile attack on the vocational school building in Makeevka, while the mobilized were sitting at the festive table. The next day, the information was confirmed by the Russian Defense Ministry.
The governor of the Samara region, Dmitry Azarov, said that among the dead in Makeyevka were servicemen from his region. On January 3, a mourning meeting was held on Glory Square in Samara in memory of the Russian soldiers who died in Makeyevka.