With frustration building about command incompetence, the demand for hapless commanders to be replaced is unlikely to ease up.
There’s one thing Western and Russian military strategists agree on — crowding a large number of mainly new conscripts inside a building within range of Ukrainian missiles so that they could see in the new year was a fatal error.
“They should never have been there,” said Britain’s retired Air Vice-Marshal Sean Bell.
Reportedly, around 600 Russian troops were at the college in Makiivka when it was struck by four American-supplied HIMARS rockets on New Year’s Day. Russia says 89 soldiers were killed — the highest single battlefield loss Moscow has acknowledged since the war began — while Ukraine estimates the death toll nearer 400.
