Russia condemns the missile assault on troops' cell phone usage at Makiivka

According to Russia, a missile attack that took place at the beginning of the year and claimed the lives of at least 89 Russian personnel happened as a consequence of the soldiers using their cell phones.

The opponent used allegedly illegal phones to locate its target, according to the police. An investigation has already been started.

The Ukrainian government claims that 400 soldiers were killed and another 300 were wounded during an attack on a conscription college in Makiivka, which took place in the Donetsk region that has been occupied.

It is the most casualties that Russia has acknowledged having sustained throughout the war.

According to Russia, a vocational college utilized a Himars rocket system to fire six rockets at 00:01 Moscow time on January 1st, two of which were shot down by security personnel.

Lieutenant Colonel Bachurin, the regiment's deputy commander, was one of those killed, according to a statement issued by the Ministry of Defense on Wednesday.

The statement claims that a panel has started looking into what happened before the accident.

Despite this, the statement said that it is "clearly obvious" that the availability of mobile phones and the "mass use" of mobile phones by troops near Ukrainian weapons was the main cause of the attack.

This component allowed the enemy to identify military units and determine their location to conduct a missile assault.

According to the statement, steps are being taken to prevent such circumstances from happening in the future, and the authorities who are found to be responsible for the investigation will be prosecuted.

There is no way to independently confirm the number of soldiers that were killed, but Russia boosted the number of Russian personnel killed in the attack from the initial estimate of 63 to 89. It is very rare for Moscow to confirm any casualties on the battlefield.

Conscripts were overflowing the vocational college at the moment. These guys had been among the 300,000 soldiers that President Vladimir Putin had instructed to partially mobilize in September. Additionally, ammunition was housed close by the area, which was later destroyed and turned into ruins.

Some Russian political commentators and pundits have accused the military of incompetence, claiming that the troops should never have been given housing in such a risky area.

Pavel Gubarev, a former senior official in Russia's proxy government in Donetsk, said that the decision to house so many soldiers in one location amounted to "criminal negligence."

If no one is punished for this, things will only become worse, he sternly warned.

It was expected that the troops would be held accountable rather than the commander who made the initial decision to group so many of them, according to Andrei Medvedev, the deputy speaker of the municipal parliament in Moscow.

He claimed this because placing the responsibility on the troops rather than the commander was more convenient.

The families of National Guard troops who died while serving their nation will receive a payout of 5 million roubles (£57,000; $69,000) according to a decree approved by President Putin on Tuesday.