Russia to troops: Your cell phones just created the deadliest strike of the Ukraine war - Fortune

Russia’s Defense Ministry confirmed successful a Telegram station connected Wednesday that a Ukrainian onslaught connected a barracks successful Russian-held Makiivka, successful the portion of Donetsk, had killed 89 of its troops. The deadly onslaught took spot astir midnight connected New Year’s Eve. Earlier accounts from Ukrainian officials suggested the decease toll from the onslaught was acold higher than Moscow has publically acknowledged.

Fortune was not capable to independently verify either report.

Russia—which revised its numbers upward connected Wednesday aft initially announcing that conscionable implicit 60 unit had died successful the strike—said that portion an probe into the circumstances surrounding the incidental were being investigated, it was wide wherefore the decease toll was truthful high.

“It is already evident that the main reason, contempt restrictions, was the turning connected and monolithic usage of mobile phones by unit wrong the scope country of force firepower,” elder Russian subject authoritative Lieutenant General Sergei Sevryukov said successful a statement aboriginal Wednesday morning. “This allowed the force to find the unit for launching the rocket strike.”

He added that Russian officials were taking measures to forestall “similar tragic incidents” from occurring again successful the future.

“As a effect of the investigation, the blameworthy officials volition beryllium brought to justice,” Sevryukov said.

Russia’s ‘unprofessional’ subject strategies blamed

It is uncommon for Moscow to corroborate subject casualties connected the frontlines successful Ukraine, and the Kremlin’s conceding of these fatalities person led to choler and accusations of incompetence successful Russia.

In an update connected Wednesday, the British Ministry of Defense said the New Year’s Eve onslaught saw Ukraine’s equipped forces people a schoolhouse gathering successful Makiivka that Russian forces had “almost surely taken implicit for subject use.”

British officials said the building—which stood little than 8 miles from 1 of the astir intensely contested areas of the conflict—had been wholly destroyed.

“Given the grade of the damage, determination is simply a realistic anticipation that ammunition was being stored adjacent to unit accommodation, which detonated during the onslaught creating secondary explosions,” British Defense officials said. “The Russian subject has a grounds of unsafe ammunition retention from good earlier the existent war, but this incidental highlights however unprofessional practices lend to Russia’s precocious casualty rate.”