Russia said on Monday that 63 Russian soldiers had been killed in a Ukrainian New Year's Eve attack on their quarters, triggering furious criticism of the military leadership from lawmakers and pro-war bloggers.
Footage posted online showed a building purported to be a vocational college in Makiivka, a city in the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine's Donetsk province, reduced to rubble.
Daniil Bezsonov, a senior Russian-backed regional official, said the college had been hit by U.S.-made HIMARS rockets around midnight, just as people would have been celebrating the start of the New Year against the backdrop of a televised speech by President Vladimir Putin.
