(PresidentialHill.com)- Late last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin oversaw the commissioning of new warships and vowed to strengthen the Russian navy.
The vessels commissioned included a corvette, a minesweeper, and the nuclear submarine the Generalissimus Suvorov.
The submarine, which is armed with Bulava nuclear-tipped intercontinental missiles, is the sixth of the new Borei-class subs in the Russian navy.
During the commissioning ceremony, Putin said Russia would “speed up and increase” ship production, equipping them “with the most modern weapons” and conducting “the operational and combat training using the experience received” during Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, on Monday, it was reported that Ukrainian rockets slammed into a vocational school in the town of Makiivka in Russian-occupied Donetsk, reducing it to rubble and killing at least 63 Russian soldiers barracked there, making it one of the deadliest attacks by Ukraine since the invasion began.
During the attack, which occurred over the weekend, Ukrainian forces fired rockets from the US-supplied HIMARS rocket system, according to a statement from the Russian Defense Ministry.
The Defense Ministry’s statement provided few details, only confirming the number of rockets fired and the number of soldiers killed. Other unconfirmed reports put the death toll much higher, Associated Press reported.
Ukraine’s Strategic Communications Directorate claimed last Sunday that about 400 Russian soldiers were killed in the attack and another 300 were wounded. However, that claim could not be independently verified.
Satellite imagery analyzed by the Associated Press showed what appears to be the aftermath of the strike on a vocational school building in Makiivka. The image from December 20 showed the building intact while the image from January 2 showed rubble where the building once stood.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address on Tuesday that Russia’s “bosses” will “no doubt” be gathering “all they can to try to reverse the battlefield situation” or “delay their defeat.”
