Losses at Makiivka: All but Putin’s fault

Kremlstraße 48. That is the address of Vocational Education Building School No. 19 in the west of Makhivka, Donetsk’s eastern neighbor in the east of Ukraine. In a gray, three-story concrete building with large windows, you can study architecture, mechanical engineering and electromechanics, at least according to the online directory of the “Donetsk People’s Republic.” In the autumn, Russia merged the shadow organization announced in 2014 with three other Ukrainian regions.

Still need a president Vladimir Putin Now more than ten months into a large-scale invasion, troops have not even been able to capture Avdivka, a neighboring town of Makivka, which has been a frontline town since 2014. Avdiivka is a dozen kilometers from the building site of School No. 19, which became a field of rubble on New Year’s Day: during the war, the unsafe operational building was used to house the occupying forces.

The facility’s now Russian name, PTU 19, refers to the largest loss of soldiers by a Ukrainian military operation in that war that Moscow acknowledged. According to Ukrainian sources, about 400 occupants of the school died and about 300 were injured. “All I know is that so many are torn to shreds that there is practically nothing left in their bodies,” a soldier’s wife from Russia’s Samara region was quoted as saying in a Telegram channel reporting on Putin’s mobilization. Ordered at the end of September.

The majority of those killed were said to be from the Volga region and had only been created during mobilization. “I know the brains were taken out of the sandal,” continued the woman. The independent news website “Wjorstka” quoted a soldier who participated in the cleanup in Makiivka. He had about 200 killed and 150 wounded. It’s terrible out there. We don’t even understand what we are fighting for, he said.