Kyiv revealed its worst military losses from a single attack of the Ukraine war on Monday, saying 87 people had been killed last week when Russian forces struck a barracks housing troops at a training base in the north.
The disclosure that scores had been killed in the attack demonstrated Russia’s ability to inflict huge losses, even far from the front. Previously, Kyiv had said eight people died in the May 17 strike on the barracks in the town of Desna.
“Today we completed work at Desna. In Desna, under the rubble, there were 87 casualties. Eighty-seven corpses,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said during a speech by video link to business leaders in Davos, Switzerland.
The toll Zelensky announced on Monday was more than double the number killed in a similar attack on a Ukrainian training base in Yaraviv in the west in March.
“History is at a turning point... This is really the moment when it is decided whether brute force will rule the world,” Zelenskiy said, calling for maximum economic sanctions.