The Wall Street Journal reports:

A Ukrainian strike killed dozens of newly mobilized soldiers in Russian-held territory in the east of the country in the single-deadliest known strike in months, piling pressure on Moscow’s military leadership, while Ukraine said it shot down at least 39 drones during another wave of attacks on Kyiv.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Monday that Ukrainian forces used a U.S.-supplied Himars rocket system to destroy a facility used as a base for mobilized troops in the city of Makiivka, in the Donbas area of eastern Ukraine. In a statement carried by Russian state news agencies, the ministry said 63 troops had died in the blast after four Himars rockets carrying high-explosive warheads struck the facility.

Anastasia Kashevarova, a Russian official, said the troops housed at the compound were mobilized from Russia’s Saratov and Samara regions.

Rybar, a Telegram news channel with links to the Russian military, said that about 70 people had been confirmed dead and more than 100 wounded as debris continued to be cleared at the site. Russian President Vladimir Putin last month included Rybar’s founder, Mikhail Zvinchuk, in a new Kremlin-run working group producing a monthly report on the progress of Russia’s troop mobilization.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said that while the number of Russian soldiers killed in the strike in Makiivka had yet to be determined, a large quantity of military equipment stationed there was destroyed.

Earlier, Ukraine’s armed forces—without saying they were behind the strike—said 400 troops had died and 300 were wounded at the school. Some Russian military journalists and bloggers, who embed with the Russian military, estimated that casualties ranged from 200 to 600 people, saying that the troops were housed at a vocational school compound. They and Russian-installed officials in Donbas said the strike came at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. [Continue reading…]