As Ukraine denied there were any deaths in the incident, Russia has claimed its military carried out a deadly “retaliatory strike” on Ukrainian soldiers’ barracks in the Donbas region.
In Kramatorsk, in the eastern Donetsk region, the Russian defense ministry reported that missiles had struck two temporary facilities holding 1,300 Ukrainian troops. They claimed that a “retaliatory strike” against Ukrainian military resulted in “more than 600 Ukrainian servicemen” getting killed.
Igor Konashenkov, the ministry’s spokesperson, said that the strike was carried out in retaliation for the massacre of dozens of Russian troops by Ukraine in an attack on Makiivka last week.
Officials from Ukraine denied that anyone was hurt during the Russian strike on Kramatorsk.
Russian strikes on Kramatorsk, according to Serhiy Cherevaty, a spokesman for the eastern Ukrainian army, only damaged civilian facilities.
He said, “The armed forces of Ukraine weren’t affected.”
Earlier on Sunday, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the Donetsk regional administration, claimed that Russian forces had launched seven rocket attacks on Kramatorsk. He added that “an educational institution, an industrial facility, and a garage cooperative” had been damaged, and that there were no casualties.
Oleksandr Honcharenko, the mayor of Kramatorsk, reported damage to eight apartment buildings and two school buildings.
Reporters from the Reuters news agency went to the two college halls of residence where, according to the Russian defense ministry, Ukrainian forces were being temporarily housed at the time of the overnight attack while stationed close to the front line of the war.
Neither seems to have taken a direct missile strike or sustained significant damage, they claimed. There were no blatant indications that troops had been residing there, and there were no bodies or traces of blood.
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