Official: 100 soldiers killed in strike on temporary Russian base near Mariupol

About 100 Russian soldiers were killed, and over 400 were injured in a strike on a former healthcare facility in the village of Yurivka near Mariupol, exiled Advisor to the mayor of Mariupol Petro Andriushchenko reported on May 29.

Four buses with Russian military personnel had arrived at the temporary base a day before, Andriushchenko said, citing local partisans from the Russian-occupied city.

A communication station and an electronic warfare system were reportedly destroyed in the strike, which Andriushchenko called "bavovna."

Ukrainian officials use this word to refer to the explosions caused by Ukraine's attacks on Russian military infrastructure, for which they don't take direct responsibility.

According to the advisor, the strike destroyed a five-story healthcare facility building, used to accommodate a maximum of 120 vacationers. If converted into barracks, the building can accommodate up to 650 soldiers, he said.

After an almost 3-month long siege of Mariupol that killed an estimated tens of thousands of civilians and damaged and destroyed thousands of buildings and major infrastructure, Russia occupied the city completely in May 2022.

News that Russia could potentially be building a logistic hub in Mariupol arrived just a few weeks after Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's visit to the city in March.

Russia continues to demolish homes destroyed by its months-long siege of Mariupol

Over the course of Russia’s siege of Ukraine’s southern city of Mariupol, over 2,000 residential buildings were heavily damaged, with around half of them now completely destroyed, the exiled Mariupol City Council said on Telegram on May 9.

The Kyiv IndependentThe Kyiv Independent news desk