DISINFO: Russia successfully retaliatiated for Ukrainian shelling of Makiivka
SUMMARY
Russian Armed Forces carried out a retaliation operation in response to Ukrainian shelling of Russian servicemen in Makiivka. More than 600 Ukrainian servicemen were killed as a result of a massive missile attack on the temporary deployment locations of units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Kramatorsk.
Within 24 hours of the Ukrainian strike on Makiivka, Russian intelligence facilities uncovered and reliably confirmed these locations of temporary deployment, enabling a successful Russian retaliatory strike.
RESPONSE
Pro-Kremlin disinformation claim in the context of Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine.
A Russian missile attack on the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk missed its targets and there were no obvious signs of casualties, a Reuters reporter found. A Reuters team visited two college dormitories that Moscow said had been temporarily housing Ukrainian personnel and which it had targeted as revenge for a New Year's attack that killed scores of Russian soldiers.
But neither dormitory in the eastern city of Kramatorsk appeared to have been directly hit or seriously damaged. There were no obvious signs that soldiers had been living there and no sign of bodies or traces of blood, Reuters reported.
Judging by the photographs, one hit was near the building (the building itself did not suffer too much), and the second - near the garages, the Conflict Intelligence Team commented.
Ukrainian officials dismissed Moscow’s claim that a large number of Kyiv’s soldiers were killed in a Russian attack in Kramatorsk. “This is nonsense,” Serhii Cherevatyi, a spokesman for Eastern Group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, told CNN, in response to the Russian claim.
The disinformation claim about the so-called "Retaliation operation" in Kramatorsk was criticised even by some pro-Kremlin telegram channels affiliated with the Russian ministry of Defence, journalist Michal Nackee observed.