Ukraine says attacks will come ‘deeper and deeper’ into Russia – as Putin faces pressure over troop deaths

Russia’s Defence Ministry blames soldiers using mobile phones for missile strike that killed scores of conscripts

Russia should expect strikes “deeper and deeper” into the territory it controls, as pressure ramps up on Moscow’s military leaders in the wake of a Ukrainian missile strike that killed scores of conscripts and the defence ministry has blamed on the use of mobile phones by its soldiers.

Raising the death toll from the strike in the Russian-held eastern Ukrainian town of Makiivka from 63 to 89 on Wednesday, the Defence Ministry claimed that the “illegal” use of mobile phones was the main factor in the attack. “This allowed the enemy to track and determine the coordinates of the soldiers’ location for a missile strike,” the ministry said – despite an investigation into the incident still going on. It is the highest death toll in a single incident that Moscow has acknowledged since it started the invasion of Ukraine last February. Kyiv has claimed that up to 400 conscripts died in the attack.

As might be expected, the claim has not gone down well with the relatives of those killed in the attack, with popular military bloggers in Russia also swift in their criticism of the statement. Semyon Pegov, a war correspondent decorated by Putin, said on Telegram the mobile phone explanation “looks like an outright attempt to smear”, while Vladlen Tatarsky, a well-known blogger, accused Russian generals of “demonstrating their own stupidity and misunderstanding of what’s going on [among] the troops, where everyone has cellphones.”