Russian army officers key to Moscow's war effort in Ukraine were killed following a strike on their military headquarters, a Russian Telegram channel has reported.
The VChK-OGPU outlet, which purports to have inside information from Russian security forces, said that the command post of Russia's 7th Airborne Division located in the occupied part of the southern Ukrainian oblast of Kherson had been hit.
"Many officers died from a targeted strike," said the post, "the exact number of victims has been carefully concealed. At the time of the shelling, the paratroopers had been undergoing daily planning."
The channel said the information was confirmed by Yevgeny Khanin, the chairman of the veterans organization of the 7th Guards Air Assault Division stationed in Novorossiysk, in Russia's Krasnodar region, which lies close to Kherson.
The channel did not provide any more information about the alleged deaths about which Newsweek has emailed Russia's Defense Ministry for comment. The post, published on Tuesday, did not say when the strike happened.
"For the Russian occupiers there is very bad news from the front today," wrote Ukrainian journalist Denis Kazansky on X (formerly Twitter) next to a screen grab of the Telegram post.
Regarding the latest reported strike on a Russian military target, the VChK-OGPU channel also noted how the previous day, the death of another commander, Colonel Andrey Kondrashkin, had been revealed.
He was the commander of the elite 31st Airborne Storm Brigade, which reportedly played a key role in Moscow's siege of Mariupol in 2022.
Alexander Khodakovsky, the commander of the Russian-aligned "Vostok" battalion fighting on the Donetsk front, suggested Kondrashkin had been killed in a Ukrainian strike.
The VChK-OGPU post on Tuesday also noted how at the end of February 2022, deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army Andrei Sukhovetsky died when the car the general was traveling in was fired upon by mortar crews.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces said that on Sunday, powerful explosions hit the headquarters of the occupying Russian army in the city of Melitopol, which is considered the gateway to Crimea.
It comes as Ukraine's Air Force said on Wednesday that 17 out of 24 attack drones sent by Russia had been shot down overnight. The Iranian-made Shahed "kamikaze" drones had targeted the Sumy, Kirovohrad, and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts.
One drone hit an oil refinery in Kremenchuk in Poltava Oblast, causing a fire to break out, the Air Force said.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in New York, where they discussed the Russian use of Iranian attack drones to target Ukrainian port infrastructure.
They also talked about efforts to resume the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which Russia withdrew from on July 17, according to Zelensky's office.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Brendan Cole is a Newsweek Senior News Reporter based in London, UK. His focus is Russia and Ukraine, in particular ... Read more
