Russia-Ukraine war: School denies Moscow’s claim of troop casualties

Municipal workers clear the rubble on the roof of College No. 47 after a Russian rocket attack left a crater at the front of a school block in Kramatorsk, Ukraine. Photo / Evgeniy Maloletka, AP

Officials at a vocational school in an eastern Ukraine city dismissed claims by Russia that hundreds of Ukrainian troops were killed in a missile strike there, saying on Monday that a rocket merely blew out windows and damaged classrooms.

Russia specifically named the vocational school in Kramatorsk as the target of an attack in the almost 11-month war. The Russian Defence Ministry said its missiles hit two temporary bases housing 1,300 Ukrainian troops in the city, killing 600 of them, late on Saturday.

Associated Press reporters visiting the scene in sunny weather on Monday saw a four-story concrete building with most of its windows blown out. Inside, locals were cleaning up debris, sweeping up broken glass and hurling broken furniture out into a missile crater below.

A woman looks out from a damaged apartment after a Russian attack in Kramatorsk, Ukraine. Photo / Libkos, AP

A separate, six-storey school building was largely undamaged. There were no signs of a Ukrainian military presence nor any casualties.

Yana Pristupa, the school’s deputy director, scoffed at Moscow’s claims of hitting a troop concentration.

“Nobody saw a single spot of blood anywhere,” she told the AP. “Everyone saw yesterday that no-one carried out any bodies. It’s just people cleaning up.”

She said that before the war began last February the school had more than 300 students, most of them studying mechanical engineering, with most lessons moving online when Russia invaded.

The students “are now in shock”, she said, adding: “What a great facility it was.”

Ukrainian officials on Sunday quickly denied the Russian claims it had lost a large number of soldiers in the attack.

Despite the absence of any evidence that hundreds of Ukrainian troops died in the strike, Moscow wouldn’t budge. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said reports from the scene didn’t shake senior officials’ faith in defence authorities.

A man walks past a school building damaged during a Russian attack in Kramatorsk. Photo / Libkos, AP

“The Defence Ministry is the main, legitimate and comprehensive source of information about the course of the special military operation,” Peskov said on Monday in a conference call with reporters, using the Kremlin’s term for the war.

During the war, both sides have regularly claimed killing hundreds of each other’s soldiers in attacks. The claims can seldom be independently verified because of the fighting.

Moscow’s allegations may have backfired domestically, however, as some Russian military bloggers criticized the Kremlin’s claims about the Kramatorsk strike.

The Institute for the Study of War think tank said the bloggers “responded negatively to the Russian [Ministry of Defence’s] claim, pointing out that the Russian MoD frequently presents fraudulent claims and criticising Russian military leadership for fabricating a story [...] instead of holding Russian leadership responsible for the losses accountable.”

A Russian Defence Ministry spokesman said the strikes on Kramatorsk were retaliation for Ukraine’s attack in Makiivka on New Year’s Eve, in which at least 89 Russian soldiers gathered at a temporary barracks died, according to Moscow. Ukrainian authorities said the death toll in that attack ran into the hundreds.

Rescuers at a site of a damaged apartment building after shelling by Ukrainian forces in Makiivka, Donetsk People's Republic, eastern Ukraine in November 2022. Photo / AP, File

It was one of the deadliest attacks on the Kremlin’s forces since the war began more than 10 months ago, and an embarrassing loss.

Such revenge strikes have occurred before. When Ukraine in early October struck a bridge linking the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula with Russia, damaging an important supply artery for the Kremlin’s faltering war effort in southern Ukraine and hitting a key symbol of Russian power in the region, the Kremlin sent a first massive barrage against Ukraine’s energy facilities. It was billed as retaliation for the bridge attack, and heralded a period of relentless bombardments against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

A Ukrainian serviceman stands at a checkpoint as the sun sets in Kramatorsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine. Photo / Libkos, AP

Ukraine’s presidential office reported on Monday that at least three civilians were killed and 12 others wounded in the country over the previous 24 hours as nine Ukrainian regions in the southeast of the country were shelled.

In one attack on Monday, two people were killed and five others, including a 13-year-old girl, were wounded by a Russian rocket strike that hit a village market in the north-eastern Kharkiv region, Ukrainian officials said.

Kharkiv regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said the strike hit Shevchenkove village. Photos posted by Syniehubov on his Telegram channel showed ruined pavilions, some of them still on fire, and rubble all around them.

According to Ukrainian officials, more people could be trapped under the rubble. A rescue operation to find them was under way.