Critics mount in Russia after New Year’s Eve strike on Russian soldiers in Makiivka, eastern Ukraine, which Moscow said claimed the death toll was 89 over the use of mobile phones by the military. According to Russian General Sergey Sevriukov, the “main cause” of the strike is “the massive use by personnel of mobile phones” despite the ban on doing so, which allowed Ukrainian forces to geolocate this concentration of Russian soldiers .
According to the Russian media, the victims were mobilized, therefore non-professional soldiers. The boss of the RT channel, the spearhead of the Kremlin’s propaganda internationally, Margarita Simonian, called for the names of the Russian officers involved to be published and for “the measure of their responsibility” to be taken. “It is time to understand that impunity does not lead to social harmony. Impunity leads to new crimes. And, therefore, public dissent,” she wrote on Telegram. ‘It is not the cell phones and their owners that are to blame, but the banal negligence of the commanders, who I am sure did not even try to relocate the staff’ out of the building, the group blasted. “Notes from a veteran” on Telegram, which has 200,000 subscribers.