Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ Relatives and survivors of the Ukrainian HIMARS strike in Mariivka are expressing outrage about official claims that mobile phone use led to the attack. Some survivors report being threatened by officers and cut off from contact with their relatives. ⬇️

2/ A person who has been in touch with relatives says the men in the destroyed building were not using SIM cards but used a Wi-Fi network called Phoenix instead. "The commanders knew about it. So they let them do it. It means they knew it wouldn't have any consequences."

3/ Survivors believe that local people passed their location to the Ukrainians. "Many people say that recently there have been a lot of suspicious people walking around there. They were even detained, but for some reason their commanders always told them to let them go.

4/ "Drones often circled over them. And it was no secret to anyone that many military personnel were stationed there. How could they have failed to notice this school in the middle of the city?"

5/ The survivors are being used to clear the rubble, according to the independent Russian outlet Verstka. One of them says that "we have exactly 200 dead and about 150 wounded. It is very frightening there.

6/ "I have tried to get out of the jungle, but the air was cut off everywhere and it was terrifying to [stay there] after that situation. I am not the only one. We don't even know what we are fighting for. It's a hell of a place. No one needs us here."

7/ The man says that his commanders have banned his comrades from talking about what happened in Makiivka – an account corroborated by relatives of other survivors. "So far they have only said words, I don't know what will happen next."

8/ A relative says that the men "still hope to find the rest of the guys. Some of them have their phones taken away, they are not allowed to communicate with their relatives. For some, their wi-fi was turned off, through which they kept in touch with their relatives.

9/ "In addition, now many of the batteries are already running low, there is no way to charge, so they remain without communication. Those who still had some kind of connection until this morning reported that they were still clearing the rubble.”

10/ Another survivor says that after the strike, their commanders "shouted at them: “Take shovels and now everyone will go to the front line without weapons, without anything, you will dig trenches and trenches there.

11/ "And if you talk a lot, we will list you as 200s [killed], or missing, or even deserters."

Some survivors say that they were "beginning to be persecuted, said they were being recognized as deserters because they had lost their weapons, scattered to wherever.

12/ But at the moment when the shelling began, it is clear that many people were jumping out of the windows in their clothes and they did not have time to run to find out where they put their weapons."

13/ It's likely that the officers who placed the mobilised men in the destroyed building in Makiivka are trying to cover up their role, but the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel names those allegedly responsible. Two officers, both mobilised, were killed in the strike.

14/ The fatalities were Senior Lieutenant Andrey Nikolaevich Shekhovtsev, head of the regimental clothing service, and Lieutenant Colonel Alexey Anatolyevich Bachurin, deputy regimental commander. Bachurin was named in the Russian MOD's statement yesterday.

15/ VChK-OGPU says that Colonel Roman Ramil'yevich Yenikeyev, commander of the 1444th Motor Rifle Regiment, and Colonel Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kuzkin were absent from the building, which was being used as the regimental headquarters, and so survived.

16/ VChK-OGPU reports: "The regiment's area of temporary deployment was selected with the participation of representatives of the 1st DNR Army Corps and the Makiivka city administration.

17/ "The person making the final decision on the temporary location of the regiment was to be the commander of the 1st Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 1st Army Corps, Colonel Aleksey Mikhailovich Khairulin, under whose command the mobilised troops of 1444 MRR were placed."

18/ This decision is being heavily criticised by Russian milbloggers. The Wagner-linked Grey Zone Telegram channel comments sarcastically that it should have been:

19/ "the very last option to set up a location of several hundred people who, as part of the organisation (disorganisation) of troops, walk around populated areas like unchained cows in a meadow."

20/ VChK-OHPU's source says that the official figure for the dead in Makiivka "does not include those whose remains could not be recovered from under the rubble and they continue to be considered "missing"."

21/ The final death toll is unclear, but VChK-OGPU writes that "those who were not injured, judging by the sets of sleeping bags supplied to them, number 130-150 people. It turns out that 240-260 people survived the strike.

22/ "There were about 400 mobilised people in the vocational school building. The estimated death toll may be in the region of 140 people." /end

Sources:
🔹 t.me/vchkogpu/35720
🔹 t.me/vchkogpu/35723
🔹 t.me/svobodnieslova…
🔹 t.me/grey_zone/16473
🔹 storage.googleapis.com/istories/news/…