What Russia's higher Makiivka death toll revealed on 4 January 2023
A look back at how Moscow's account of the New Year strike on Makiivka changed within days, and what it blamed.
What did the Russian defence ministry's revised figure for Makiivka tell observers on 4 January 2023? The previous day, 3 January, the ministry had raised to 89 the number of its soldiers killed in the Ukrainian missile attack on military quarters in Makiivka, Donetsk Oblast, which took place on 31 December.
The ministry attributed the casualties to the soldiers' use of mobile phones with tracking systems. That was the explanation Moscow chose to offer, and it placed the cause of the deaths on the troops' own conduct.
The revision was notable for how quickly it came. Russian officials had first confirmed 63 deaths, according to later accounts of the strike, and the figure then rose to 89 two days later. Ukrainian officials claimed that the attack had killed 400 Russian troops, a figure far above anything Moscow acknowledged.
As later described, the strike hit the building of Professional Technical School No. 19 in Makiivka during the night of 31 December 2022 to 1 January 2023. It was carried out with HIMARS rockets and destroyed the building and nearby military equipment.
For readers weighing the competing numbers, the gap between the Ukrainian claim and the Russian count was wide, and the Russian figure itself had already moved once. The ministry's emphasis on mobile phones was the only explanation it gave for the losses.
