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The survivors of the Ukrainian strike on Makiivka, which took the lives of 89 Russian soldiers in early January, spoke to their relatives via a video call organised by the Russian authorities. The names of the servicemen killed in the strike have not yet been revealed to their relatives.
A video recording of the conversation was shown to the media.
In the published footage, the relatives asked the soldiers to wave to them and “fulfil their promise and return with victory,” with many barely holding back tears. The mother of one of the servicemen is heard congratulating him on the birth of his daughter:
Meanwhile, as noted by independent media outlet ASTRA, there are still numerous messages on social media from the alleged relatives of the mobilized servicemen whose fate after the strike on Makiivka remains unclear.
According to the official version of the Russian Ministry of Defense, 89 people were killed on January 1 as a result of a Ukrainian HIMARS strike on a vocational school building in Makiivka. The strike resulted in the biggest loss of life from a single attack that Moscow has acknowledged since it began its invasion in February.
On January 9, Alexei Vdovin, the military commissar of Russia’s Samara region, said that a list of the dead would not be revealed to the public, as the data “could be used by foreign intelligence agencies”.