 Emergency workers were seen on Tuesday, January 3rd, clearing the rubble of a building in Makivka in the Russian-controlled Donetsk region of Ukraine after it was shelled on Sunday, January 1st, killing at least 63 Russian soldiers. The missile strike on the vocational college building, which Russia has blamed on Ukrainian forces, is one of the bloodiest incidents of Russia's nearly year-long special military operation in Ukraine. The building was reportedly serving as a temporary barracks for mobilized Russian troops. Danil Bezanov, a senior Russian-backed regional official, said the college had been hit by the US-made Himmars rockets around midnight, just as people would have been celebrating the start of the new year against the backdrop of a televised speech by President Vladimir Putin. Russia's Defence Ministry acknowledged the attack and the 63 deaths of Russian service personnel, only in the final paragraph of a 528-word daily roundup, more than 36 hours later. Even then, it did not address some of the allegations made by the Kremlin loyal bloggers who said casualties were far higher and that the military had not only failed to hide its soldiers from the enemy, but also stored ammunition close by. Notably, open fury also extended on Monday to some lawmakers. Ukraine had alleged that 400 Russians had been killed, a number dismissed as an exaggeration by Russian bloggers. A pro-Kremlin blogger known as Raibar, with more than a million subscribers on Telegram, said that, besides around 70 confirmed dead, more than 100 had been wounded. He said about 600 people had been in the building. Igor Girkin, a former commander of pro-Russian troops in East Ukraine who has become a high profile critic of Russia's military, said on Telegram that there were many hundreds of dead and wounded. Like Raibar, he said ammunition had been stored at the college, potentially accounting for its extreme devastation, and that the military presence had not been disguised. Reuters was unable to verify the battlefield accounts. A source close to the Russian-installed Donetsk leadership told Reuters, the building had housed some of the 300,000 or more soldiers mobilized since September. Many have already been sent to the front to bolster a 10-month-old campaign in which Russia has been driven out of large swathes of the Ukrainian territory it has seized and been forced to replace many of its senior commanders. The fact that so many of the dead were not volunteer career soldiers was likely to fuel the anger of relatives and some of the ordinary Russians whom Putin asked in his New Year address for support and sacrifices in the months ahead. The news outlet 63.ru based in Samara quoted regional governor Dmitry Azarov as saying some of those killed were from his region and advising concerned relatives to contact local recruitment centres for information.