Free Republic

RUSSIA claimed it killed 600 Ukrainian soldiers in a single massive rocket strike in revenge for a deadly attack on Putin's forces. Moscow said it had blasted two buildings temporarily housing 1,300 Ukrainian troops in the country's eastern region Donetsk on Sunday.Russia's defence ministry claimed more than 600 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in the city of Kramatorsk in what it branded a "retaliatory strike". But Ukraine has dismissed Moscow's claim. Serhiy Cherevaty, a spokesman for the Ukrainian army, told the BBC: "This is another piece of Russian propaganda." Kramatorsk's mayor earlier said there had been no casualties. Russia's defence...

Russia acknowledged on Monday that scores of its troops were killed in one of the Ukraine war's deadliest strikes, drawing demands from nationalist bloggers for commanders to be punished for housing soldiers alongside an ammunition dump. Russia's defence ministry said 63 soldiers had died in the fiery blast which destroyed a temporary barracks in a former vocational college in Makiivka, twin city of the Russian-occupied regional capital of Donetsk. It said the accommodation had been hit by four rockets fired from U.S.-made HIMARS launchers, claiming two rockets had been shot down. Kyiv said the Russian death toll was in the...