Russia admits more soldiers died in Ukrainian attack than first revealed

Ukraine's deadly missile attack on a barracks housing Russian soldiers has been blamed on the dead by Moscow's military elite, as Geraint Vincent reports

Russia's top military bosses have come under increased scrutiny after the Kremlin admitted more soldiers died in a single artillery attack than first revealed.

Some Russian officials sought to blame their own soldiers for the devastating strike, stating improper mobile phone use helped Ukraine determine the location of military personnel - a claim that has been met with scepticism.

Ukrainian forces targeted a single building with a missile strike in the Russian-held Ukrainian town of Makiivka - they have claimed some 400 soldiers died in the blast, with 300 more of them wounded.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin raised their initial death toll from 63 to 89 in a rare admission.

Hundreds of Russian troops were reportedly clustered in a building close to the front line before it was hit with Western-supplied artillery.

The strike represents one of the deadliest attacks on Kremlin forces since the war began and has the highest death toll of a single incident acknowledged so far by either side in the conflict.

Scepticism over Russian mobile phone claims

The Russian military blamed the soldiers for their own deaths. The general who spoke in public to make the statement was Sergei Sevryukov, who does not normally appear in state media - a possible sign that more senior generals did not want to be associated with the incident.

He said their phone signals allowed Kyiv’s forces to “determine the coordinates of the location of military personnel” and launch a strike.

Emily Ferris, a Research Fellow on Russia and Eurasia at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said it is “very hard to verify” whether mobile phone signalling and geolocation were to blame for the accurate strike.

She noted that Russian soldiers on active duty are forbidden from using their phones - because there have been so many instances in recent years of their being used for targeting, including by both sides in the Ukraine war.

She also noted that blaming the soldiers themselves was a “helpful narrative” for Moscow as it helps deflect criticism and steer attention toward the official mobile phone ban.

Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to move the conversation along, too, as he took part via video link in a sending-off ceremony for a frigate equipped with the Russian navy’s new hypersonic missiles.

Russia says the missiles can't be intercepted.

Meanwhile, away from the battlefields, France said it will send French-made AMX-10 RC light tanks to Ukraine - a first from a Western European country - following an afternoon phone call between French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The weekend Makiivka strike seemed to be the latest blow to the Kremlin’s military prestige as it struggles to advance the invasion of its neighbour amid a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive.

UK intelligence officials said that Moscow’s “unprofessional” military practices were likely partly to blame for the high casualties.

“Given the extent of the damage, there is a realistic possibility that ammunition was being stored near to troop accommodation, which detonated during the strike, creating secondary explosions,” the UK Defence Ministry said on Twitter.

The Russian Defence Ministry, in a rare admission of losses, initially said the strike killed 63 troops. But as emergency crews searched the ruins, the death toll mounted. The regiment’s deputy commander was among the dead.

Something that stirred renewed criticism inside Russia of the way the broader military campaign is being handled by the Ministry of Defence.

Unconfirmed reports in Russian-language media said the victims were mobilised reservists from the region of Samara, in southwestern Russia.

In a grinding battle of attrition, Russian forces have pressed their offensive on Bakhmut in Donetsk despite heavy losses. The Wagner Group, a private military contractor owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a millionaire businessman with close ties to Putin, has spearheaded the Bakhmut offensive.

US intelligence officials have determined that convicts Wagner pulled from prisons accounted for 90% of Russian casualties in fighting for Bakhmut, according to a senior administration official who requested anonymity to discuss the finding.

The White House said last month that intelligence findings showed Wagner had some 50,000 personnel fighting in Ukraine, including 40,000 recruited convicts.

The US assesses that Wagner is spending about $100 million a month in the fight.

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