How Ukraine hit Russian barracks in precision strike

Russia's defence ministry says 63 soldiers were killed in the Ukrainian strike on New Year's Eve

From left to right: Workers clear rubble after a Ukrainian rocket strike in Makiivka, and a satellite image shows the area following the shelling. AP / Reuters

Stark images released at the weekend showed how a Russian barracks was destroyed by a Ukrainian-fired Himars, with dozens of conscripts killed.

Russia's defence ministry said 63 soldiers were killed in the Ukrainian strike on New Year's Eve that destroyed a temporary barracks at a vocational college in Makiivka, near the Russian-occupied regional capital of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine and some Russian nationalist bloggers have put the Makiivka death toll in the hundreds.

Critics in Moscow lambasted Russian leaders who had been housing the soldiers near an ammunition dump, which the defence ministry said was hit by four rockets fired from US-made Himars launchers.

TV footage showed the huge building reduced to rubble as cranes and bulldozers picked through concrete debris lying over a metre deep.

Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine's director of military intelligence, refused on Tuesday to claim credit for the attack, but said in an interview that the country's targets would be located “deeper and deeper” behind Russian lines.

Satellite image shows Makiivka before, left, and after, right, the shelling in which Russian military personnel were killed. Photo: Planet Labs PBC

Russia hinted at having struck back on Tuesday, with a state media report saying two of the sophisticated Himars had been destroyed in return fire.

“In the course of a counter-battery fight in the area of the city of Kramatorsk, positions were opened and two launchers of the US-made Himars multiple launch rocket system were destroyed, from which shelling of settlements in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) was carried out,” said the report from news agency RIA, citing the Russian defence ministry.

Also in Donetsk, Ukraine's Security Service reported that it had found a makeshift torture chamber with equipment, disposal bags, heavy objects and tasers.

“According to the investigation, representatives of the aggressor country seized houses in the village and illegally held and brutally tortured local residents who refused to co-operate with the enemy,” said the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office.

There has been no let up in attacks on Ukraine and officials fear Russia's strategy is to grind down its citizens.

With Russia launching nightly waves of drone attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned attacks were designed to exhaust “our people, our anti-aircraft defences, our energy”.

Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat told Ukrainian TV that 84 drones had been shot down in two Russian attacks since the new year.

“There is an increase in the use of drones in all directions,” he said.

Mr Ihnat added that Ukraine's armed forces were organising mobile groups to hunt the drones down, using jeeps and other vehicles equipped with anti-aircraft machine guns and searchlights.

Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Tuesday spoke to Mr Zelenskyy on the phone to reassure him that further donations of weapons were in the pipeline.

• 

  A building burned from a strike as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, in Bakhmut. Reuters

• 

  Antonina, a refugee from Bakhmut in Donetsk region, with dogs she rescued in Izyum, Kharkiv. AFP

• 

  A resident gives her neighbours hot food brought by volunteers in Izyum. AFP

• 

  A Ukrainian soldier salutes as he works to build a bunker with sand in Bakhmut. Reuters

• 

  Volodymyr Kovalov, 77, carries tree branches attached to his bike as he collects wood for heating and cooking in Kherson region. AFP

• 

  A local resident takes pictures of a destroyed monastery in Dolyna, eastern Ukraine. AFP

• 

  A decoy dummy made with the clothes of a Russian soldier at the entrance of a destroyed cinema in Kamyanka, eastern Ukraine. AFP

• 

  Destroyed houses in the city of Kamyanka. AFP

• 

  Caesar, 50, a Russian who joined the Freedom of Russia Legion to fight on the side of Ukraine, stands in front of a destroyed monastery in Dolyna. AFP

• 

  An employee stands next to a shelter at a stainless pipes plant in Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region. AFP

• 

  Ivan and Iryna Kalinin before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Iryna, who was pregnant, was killed in a Russian air strike on Mariupol's maternity hospital. Ivan returned to the occupied city to rebury his wife and baby. AP

• 

  Natalia, 67, sits inside her house that was damaged in a Russian military strike, in Kramatorsk, Ukraine. Reuters

• 

  Ukrainian soldiers ride in a military vehicle in Bakhmut, a city in the Donetsk enclave. AP

• 

  Smoke billows from a building on fire after a Russian attack in Bakhmut. AP

• 

  Sasha and her grandfather stand outside their home in Bakhmut. AP

• 

  Ukrainian soldiers set up a barricade in Bakhmut. AP

• 

  Nastya carries her cat as her mother Anna says goodbye to neighbours with whom they lived for months in a basement during Russian attacks in Soledar, a city in the Donetsk enclave of Ukraine. AP

• 

  Anna and Nastya in the basement during a Russian attack nearby. AP

• 

  A Ukrainian soldier is wheeled on a stretcher at a hospital in the Donetsk enclave. AP

• 

  A woman looks a building damaged by Russian shelling in Kherson. AFP

• 

  Oleksandra Koshkina, 85, sits in a car as she returns to her village of Torske, in the Donetsk enclave. Reuters

• 

  A resident of Bakhmut walks along an empty street. Reuters

• 

  A street market in Bakhmut. Reuters

• 

  A Ukrainian soldier poses for a picture in the Donetsk enclave. Reuters

• 

  Officials tend to a patient on a plane carrying Ukrainian Jewish refugees as they wait to disembark at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv. AFP

The two men discussed the “abhorrent drone attacks on Ukraine in recent days, and the Prime Minister said the thoughts of the UK were with the Ukrainian people as they continued to live under such bombardment,” Downing Street said in a statement.

“The Prime Minister said Ukraine could count on the UK to continue to support it for the long term, as demonstrated by the recent delivery of more than 1,000 anti-air missiles.

“Work was also under way to provide further equipment in the coming weeks and months to secure Ukraine’s victory on the battlefield”, the Prime Minister added.

“Discussing the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) summit in Latvia last month, the Prime Minister thanked the President for joining virtually and said the UK and JEF partners were working closely to provide the vital equipment requested.

“The leaders agreed to stay in close touch in the coming weeks.”