Ukrainian Armed Forces suffered losses due to Russian attack on training ground: details from General Drapaty
3 March 2025 12:27
Thecommander of the Land Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Mykhailo Drapaty, has confirmed a Russian ballistic missile strike on a training ground in the Dnipro region, which killed Ukrainian soldiers. Drapaty wrote about this on his Telegram page, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports
“On March 1, one of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was the target of a missile attack. At the time of the hit, the military were lined up at a training ground.
“An investigation into the circumstances of the tragedy is currently underway. I personally follow every step to find out everything second by second. Because I am also in pain. Because anger is eating away at me from the inside.”
Drapatyi expressed his condolences to the families of the victims, “brothers-in-arms and everyone who knew our soldiers.”
“I was waiting for the first data so as not to be unfounded, and now I have to warn you: everyone who made decisions that day, and everyone who did not make them in time, will be held accountable. No one will hide behind explanations or formal reports. I foresee that they will try to hide the truth in the fog of bureaucracy. But I will not allow it,” Drapaty emphasized
He emphasized that he had appointed an independent check with the participation of military counterintelligence, “so that no detail is left out, and the perpetrators are named and cannot “get away with it”.
“I will demand the most severe punishment. Those who continue to negligently and formally fulfill their duties during the years of war, those who “drag” the military into outdated procedures, neglecting their safety, those who assert themselves not in battle, but by oppressing their subordinates – they all disgrace the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” Drapaty said.
The general added that the attack on the training ground was the result of untimely decisions and unlearned lessons. He called on “all generals, officers, sergeants and soldiers of the Land Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine” to “get rid of formalism, bureaucracy and frivolity.”
The day before, the Russians announced that they had fired an Iskander-M missile at a military training ground in the Dnipro region.
The strike was allegedly carried out by an Orlan drone right when the soldiers were lining up.
According to various reports, dozens of people may have been killed and hundreds injured. Observers pointed to the danger posed by the Soviet practice of lining up near the front.
The Russian Ministry of Defense also released a video showing the arrival of a cluster munition at a cluster of personnel.
Drapaty did not name the range that was hit. However, on the evening of March 2, journalist Andriy Tsaplienko wrote that the Russian occupiers had attacked the deployment of the 157th separate mechanized brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine at the Novomoskovsky training ground near the village of Cherkaske.
According to him, the attack was carried out on March 1 with an Iskander missile with a cluster munition.
At the same time, on March 3, Suspilne reported that a regional hospital in Dnipropetrovs’k region had “a large number of wounded” as a result of a strike on a training ground in the region where the military were stationed. The network also reported that humanitarian aid was being collected for the regional hospital where the wounded were being treated, including clothes for men, mattresses, food, and water.
