Ukraine Launches Probe After Russian Strikes Kill 19 During Ceremony

• Nineteen Ukrainian soldiers were killed after Russian strikes hit an awards ceremony near the front.
• Ukraine announced a criminal investigation into the military officers for organizing the event.
• The attack drew criticism, given Ukraine has previously exploited similar mistakes by the Russians. 

Ukraine has launched a criminal probe into the military officers responsible for organizing an awards ceremony near the frontline after the gathering was struck by Russian missiles resulting in the deaths of 19 soldiers.

The Rocket Forces and Artillery Day event held Friday in a village about 10 miles from the battlefield in the Zaporizhia region was hit by two Russian missile strikes in succession, an unnamed military official told The New York Times earlier this week.

Nineteen soldiers died in the missile strike, the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade said in a Monday Facebook statement.

The State Bureau of Investigation on Monday said its probe will seek to hold responsible the Ukrainian commanders behind the doomed ceremony, which represents one of the single deadliest attacks Ukraine has reported since the war began, according to The Associated Press.

The troop-honoring event flouted several standard wartime precautions as Ukrainian troops massed within striking range of the Russians and close enough to the frontline that Russia’s reconnaissance drones could easily zero in on the gathering.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy slammed the military commanders responsible for “negligence” in a social media video posted Sunday, saying the men’s deaths were a “tragedy that could’ve been avoided,” and suggesting “Soviet legacy” and Ukraine’s “terrible bureaucracy” are holding the army back from its full potential.

The tragedy raised civilian questions and criticisms about the ceremony — especially after Ukraine has exploited similar mistakes made by the Russians several times.

In August, Ukraine said it launched a HIMARS attack on five Russian units gathered on a beach resulting in 200 casualties. Video of the strike appeared to show Russian soldiers stretching and standing in plain sight on the shore just moments before HIMARS munitions struck.

At the time, Mark Cancian, a retired US Marine Corps colonel and senior advisor with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ security program, told Insider that Russia had violated “military operations 101” by allowing its troops to gather en masse in a visible place.

The August attack came just weeks after reports suggested Ukraine executed an eerily similar strike, launching a HIMARS attack on Russian soldiers who had been standing still for two hours while waiting for a commander’s speech.

Ukraine’s announcement this week that it would investigate the circumstances surrounding the ceremony came just before Ukraine’s commander in chief, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi announced one of his top aides was killed while celebrating his birthday on Monday by a grenade in one of his presents.