New Year attack on military camps
London: Kremlin improves the number of the dead
01/28/2023, 11:18 am
On New Year’s Eve, numerous Russian soldiers use their mobile phones and betray their accommodation – which is then hit by Ukrainian rockets. The information on the fatalities differ widely. For British intelligence, an example of targeted lies by Russia.
According to British intelligence services, Russia is making false statements about the number of its casualties in the war against Ukraine. The Ministry of Defense in London referred to findings on a Ukrainian attack on a Russian military base in Makiivka in the Donetsk region on New Year’s Eve. Subsequently, Russia had reported the death of 89 soldiers. According to the British secret services, however, there is a high probability that more than 300 victims have died. Moscow had previously reported 63 deaths.
For London, this illustrates a “pervasiveness of disinformation in all Russian public statements.” The report said that this was caused by deliberate lies that were nodded off by high-ranking officials and inaccurate reports by lower-level officials who wanted to downplay their own shortcomings for fear of being fired.
In the specific case from New Year’s Eve, Russia probably decided to take the unusual step of naming a specific number of victims because there had been a lot of criticism from Russian commanders and a comment had become unavoidable. The Ukraine had fired at the accommodation with the US HIMARS multiple rocket launcher and spoke of 400 dead and 300 injured. According to Russian sources, the main reason for the “tragedy” was that the soldiers used their mobile phones en masse on New Year’s Eve, despite a ban, thereby drawing attention to their location.
The British Ministry of Defense has published daily information on the course of the war since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine eleven months ago. Moscow accuses London of a disinformation campaign.