Man claiming to be draftee who came under fire in Makiivka says soldiers gathered to hear Putin’s speech just before missile strike

7:53 pm, January 8, 2023

Update: Journalists at Astra spoke to relatives of a soldier named Anton Golovinsky who was deployed to Makiivka, but they say the man in the video trending online is not him.

A video circulating on Russian and Ukrainian Telegram channels, as well as in traditional Ukrainian media, shows a man, who says he was mobilized from Samara, describing the circumstances surrounding a New Year’s strike on Russian troops in Makiivka, in the Donetsk region.

The clip, whose authenticity has not been independently confirmed, shows a wounded man with a bandaged head and face. His speech is not entirely audible. He gives his name as Anton Golovinsky. The man says that draftees were brought to Makiivka in late December and quartered in a vocational school building. He says draftees “asked to be placed separately, not all together.”

The wounded man claims that on New Year’s Eve, service members were sent to the building’s assembly hall to watch President Vladimir Putin’s New Year’s speech.

We asked them not to do this. They told us to follow orders.

According to the soldier, the order came from Colonel Roman Enikeyev.

The clip in which a man, who says he was mobilized in Samara and survived the attack on Makiivka on New Year’s, describes the events. He says that it was possible for the strike to kill such a large number of soldiers because they had all been gathered into an assembly all to watch Vladimir Putin’s New Year’s speech.

Ukrainian journalist Andriy Tsaplienko later reported that Anton Golovinsky had died in a Rostov hospital from severe injuries and burns.

Update. Online news outlet Astra claims that “a completely different person was filmed under the guise of Anton Golovinsky, mobilized from Samara.” Astra reports, citing Golovinsky’s relatives, that he really was in Makiivka, but the person in the video isn’t him. His relatives haven’t been in touch with him since December 31.

Official reports from the Russian Ministry of Defense say that a Ukrainian Armed Forces strike on Makiivka in the early hours of January 1, 2023 killed 89 Russian service members, who had been stationed in a vocational school building. The Ukrainian side claims to have killed around 400 people.

The Russian Defense Ministry blamed its own soldiers for the attack, saying that widespread mobile phone use allowed Ukraine to set coordinates for the strike. The ministry did not explain why the soldiers were all located together in a building within reach of Ukrainian artillery.