Russian claims to have killed 600 troops in Kramatorsk strike ‘propaganda,’ says Ukraine

Moscow has claimed to have killed hundreds of Ukrainian troops in a revenge strike but witnesses at the scene say there are no signs of any bodies.

Russia has claimed to have killed 600 Ukrainian troops in their barracks as revenge for a strike by Kyiv last week that saw at least 89 soldiers die.

But Ukraine has rubbished the claims and said they were “propaganda”. While news agency Reuters has visited the barracks and said they were undamaged and “there was no obvious signs of casualties”.

British and Finnish media outlets have also stated that their journalists or sources have gone to the claimed massacre site and have come to similar conclusions that none occured.

Moscow claimed on Sunday its army conducted a deadly “retaliatory strike” in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk to avenge the deaths of Russian troops killed in Makiivka.

“More than 600 Ukrainian servicemen were killed” as a result of a strike on Kyiv troops stationed in two buildings in Kramatorsk used as barracks, the Russian defence ministry claimed in a statement.

The result of Russian attack in September in the Kramatorsk region. (Photo by Juan BARRETO / AFP)

But Ukraine’s armed forces rejected the claim.

“This information is as true as the data that they have destroyed all of our HIMARS,” Sergiy Cherevaty, spokesman for the Eastern group of the Ukrainian armed forces, told the Suspilne media outlet, referring to US-supplied rocket systems. He said Russia could not deliver high-precision strikes.

On Saturday, AFP journalists in Kramatorsk, which is located in the eastern region of Donetsk, heard at least four explosions before midnight.

Both countries marked Orthodox Christmas on Saturday.

The Russian defence ministry did not say when exactly the strike had taken place but said that Russian intelligence had “over the past 24 hours” confirmed the points of temporary deployment of Ukraine’s armed forces in Kramatorsk.

Before and after image of the Ukrainian New Year 2023 strike on the Russian base at Makiivka in Russian occupied Ukraine which killed at least 89 soldiers.

More than 1300 Ukrainian troops were housed in two buildings, Moscow claimed.

Reuters said it visited the site of the two college dormitories on Sunday which Moscow claimed to have hit.

“Neither appeared to have been directly hit by missiles or seriously damaged. There were no obvious signs that soldiers had been living there and no sign of bodies or traces of blood,” it said.

Another building Russia claimed to have hit, the news agency said, was “entirely intact” but a crater did lay about 50 metres away.

Earlier on Sunday, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the Donetsk regional administration, said Russians launched seven rocket attacks on Kramatorsk.

Flowers laid in memory of 89 Russian soldiers that Russia says were killed in a Ukrainian strike on Russian-controlled territory. (Photo by Arden Arkman / AFP)

He said that “an educational institution, an industrial facility and a garage cooperative” had been damaged and that there were no casualties.

In a New Year’s attack, Ukraine struck a building in the occupied eastern Ukrainian town of Makiivka being used as a barracks.

Russia conceded 89 troops had died, in what was the worst single reported loss from a Ukrainian strike.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered a 36-hour ceasefire to allow Orthodox Christians to mark Christmas which is celebrated on January 7 in Russia and Ukraine.