 Russians demand punishment of Russian commanders. Russians demanded punishment of Russian commanders. Russian nationalists and some lawmakers have demanded punishment for commanders they accused of ignoring danger as anger grew over the killing of dozens of Russian soldiers in one of the Ukraine war's deadliest strikes. In a rare disclosure, Russia's defense ministry said 63 soldiers were killed. On New Year's Eve, in a fiery blast that destroyed a temporary barracks in a vocational college in Makivka, twin city of the Russian-occupied regional capital of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. Russian critics said the soldiers were being housed alongside an ammunition dump at the site which the Russian defense ministry said was hit by four rockets fired from US-made Himmars launchers. The New Year's Eve strike on Makivka came as Russia was launching what have become nightly waves of drone attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. Ukrainian officials said Russia had, on Monday, struck Ukraine-controlled parts of the Donetsk region, hitting the village of Yakovlevka, the city of Kramatorsk and destroying an ice rink in the town of Druzhkivka. Ukraine said the Russian death toll in Makivka was in the hundreds, though pro-Russian officials called that an exaggeration. Russian military bloggers said the extent of the destruction was as a result of storing ammunition in the same building as a barracks, despite commanders knowing it was within range of Ukrainian rockets. Igor Gerkin, a former commander of pro-Russian troops in eastern Ukraine, who is now one of the highest-profile Russian nationalist military bloggers, said hundreds had been killed or wounded. Ammunition had been stored at the site and military equipment that was uncamouflaged, he said. What happened in Makivka is horrible, wrote Archangel Speznak-Z, a Russian military blogger with more than 700,000 followers on the Telegram Messaging app. Who came up with the idea to place personnel in large numbers in one building, where even a fool will understand that even if they hit with artillery, there will be many wounded or dead, he wrote. Commanders couldn't care less, he said. Ukraine almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine, and President Volodymyr Zelensky did not address the Makivka strike in his nightly speech on Monday. But the general staff of Ukraine's armed forces reported the Makivka attacks as a strike on Russian manpower and military equipment. It did not mention casualties, but said 10 pieces of military equipment were destroyed. The fury in Russia extended to lawmakers. Grigory Karasin, a member of the Russian Senate and former Deputy Foreign Minister, not only demanded vengeance against Ukraine and its NATO supporters, but also an exacting internal analysis. Sergei Mironov, a legislator and former chairman of the Senate, Russia's upper house, demanded criminal liability for the officials who had allowed the concentration of military personnel in an unprotected building, and all the higher authorities who did not provide the proper level of security. Unverified footage posted online of the aftermath of the blast at the Russian barracks in Makivka showed a huge building reduced to smoking rubble. Some of the dead came from the Southern Russian region of Samara, the region's governor told Russian media, urging concerned relatives to contact recruitment centers for information. Andrey Medvedev, Deputy Speaker of the Moscow City Duma and pro-Kremlin journalist said authorities were the civilian or military must value Russian lives. Either a person is of the highest value and then punish for stupid losses of personnel as for treason to the Fatherland or the country is over. Medvedev wrote on the Telegram messaging app, a Russian-backed military information center in the Donetsk region said there had been 69 Ukrainian attacks on the region, including Makivka. Having suffered defeats on the battlefield in the second half of 2022, Russia resorted to mass air strikes against Ukrainian cities.