Ukraine’s ‘Best Fighters’ Take Heavy Losses After Russian Precision Strike on Awards Ceremony

Personnel from elite Ukrainain Armed Forces units have suffered high casualties after a Russian missile strike on an awards ceremony, according to multiple reports. The strike was confirmed Ukraine’s Operational Task Force East, with personnel from the 35th Separate Marine Brigade including elite drone operators confirmed to have been among those killed. Dmytro Sviatnenko, a Ukrainian journalist, reported that the personnel “were gathered on the parade ground to be awarded. They gathered the best. The best pilots and infantrymen of the brigade. In order of command. In open terrain. Ballistics flew in. The story of negligence repeated itself.” A team of investigators from Ukraine’s state bureau of investigation (SBI) is reportedly now examining whether safety protocols were followed after the air raid alert.

The Russian Armed Forces have consistently singled out the positions of elite units for targeting, often using the Iskander-M ballistic missile system to maximise damage and neutralise targets with little warning time. The targeting of highlytrained personnel who are able to utilise complex equipment has been considered an effective means of seriously undermining the Ukrainain war effort. These have included not only Ukrainian personnel, but also foreign contractors and active duty servicemen who have played an outsized role in the war. In January 2024, for example, a strike on predominantly French European fighters in Ukraine caused at least 80 casualties, 60 or more of whom were killed. Russian state media reported that these personnel were “highly trained specialists who work on specific weapons systems too complex for the average Ukrainian conscripts,” which “put some of the most lethal and long-range weapons in the Ukrainian arsenal out of service until more specialists are found” to replace them.

Although elite units have been singled out for targeting, conscript units have suffered more extreme casualty rates, at times approaching 80-90 percent, during the war. The Ukrainian Army’s practice of recruiting poor men from villages and sending them to the frontlines with just two days of training, as confirmed by Wall Street Journal among other sources, has been a leading contributor to this. The life expectancy for personnel on high intensity frontiers has at times been as low as just four hours, according to reports from Western observers on the ground. In April 2023 Ukrainian ambassador to the United Kingdom Vadim Pristaiko revealed that Kiev was concealing the full number of casualties suffered in the war, stating that “it has been our policy from the start not to discuss our losses,” but that “when the war is over, we will acknowledge this. I think it will be a horrible number.” Losses were confirmed in August to have exceeded 1.7 million personnel, with the Armed Forces facing a personnel crisis has frontline units have been seriously understaffed. A flow of contractor combatants from across the Western world and Latin America has only partly eased the burden of holding the frontlines.