Moscow launches ‘retaliatory strike’ which it claims ‘killed 600 Ukrainian servicemen’

Russia claims to have killed 600 Ukrainian troops in a deadly ‘retaliatory strike’ in the eastern city of Kramatorsk today.

Moscow conducted the missile strikes to avenge the deaths of 89 Russian troops killed in Makiivka on January 1.

Following the New Year’s Day attack, Russia’s defence ministry made a rare admission and confirmed dozens soldiers died in the fiery blast.

Today the ministry claimed that a ‘retaliatory strike’ killed ‘more than 600 Ukrainian servicemen’ stationed in two buildings in Kramatorsk used as barracks.

Ukraine’s armed forces rejected the claim.

Russia claims to have killed more than 600 Ukrainian servicemen in retaliatory missile strikes in Kramatorsk (pictured)

Kyiv killed 89 Russian troops in Makiivka in missile strikes on New Year’s Day (pictured: a damaged building near the site of a missile strike in Kramatorsk)

Ukraine’s armed forces have rejected the claim that more than 600 of their troops were killed

‘This information is as true as the data that they have destroyed all of our HIMARS,’ Sergiy Cherevaty, spokesman for the Eastern group of the Ukrainian armed forces, told the Suspilne media outlet, referring to US-supplied rocket systems. He said Russia could not deliver high-precision strikes.

AFP could not independently verify the report.

On Saturday, AFP journalists in Kramatorsk, which is located in the eastern region of Donetsk, heard at least four explosions before midnight.

Both countries marked Orthodox Christmas on Saturday.

The Russian defence ministry did not say when exactly the strike had taken place but said that Russian intelligence had ‘over the past 24 hours’ confirmed the points of temporary deployment of Ukraine’s armed forces in Kramatorsk.

More than 1,300 Ukrainian troops were housed in two buildings, Moscow claimed.

Workers remove debris of a destroyed building in Makiivka purported to be a vocational college used as temporary accommodation for Russian soldiers, dozens of whom were killed in a Ukrainian missile strike

Russia conceded 89 troops had died, in what was the worst single reported loss from a Ukrainian strike

Earlier Sunday, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the Donetsk regional administration, said Russians launched seven rocket attacks on Kramatorsk.

He said that ‘an educational institution, an industrial facility and a garage cooperative’ had been damaged and that there were no casualties.

In a New Year’s attack, Ukraine struck a building in the occupied eastern Ukrainian town of Makiivka being used as a barracks.

Russia conceded 89 troops had died, in what was the worst single reported loss from a Ukrainian strike.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered a 36-hour ceasefire to allow Orthodox Christians to mark Christmas which is celebrated on January 7 in Russia and Ukraine.

The unilateral ceasefire ended at 11:00 pm in Kyiv on Saturday.