ZAPORIZHZHYA, Ukraine -- Soldiers from the 128th Separate Mountain Assault Brigade had mustered in the late morning, in the courtyard of a building in Zarichne, a small village about 20 kilometers north of trench lines and minefields that have thwarted Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russian troops.
The November 3 event was organized to mark a military holiday honoring Ukraine’s artillery and missile units, and some of gathered soldiers were slated to receive medals, or even promotions.
Suddenly, an explosion ripped through the low-slung buildings nearby: a Russian-launched Iskander-M missile, Ukrainian officials later said.
Nineteen soldiers were killed, the brigade said in a statement.
On November 6, Ukraine’s military announced that the brigade’s commander had been suspended from duty, pending an investigation. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called the incident a crime: "all the circumstances of what happened, who specifically gave orders and what they were should be clarified.”
The attack was the latest psychological blow to Ukraine’s armed forces as they struggle in an uphill battle to change the course of the Russian invasion, now in its 21st month. Five months after launching an ambitious counteroffensive, Ukrainian troops have little to show for it, with Western impatience growing and signs of pressure for possible cease-fire talks with Moscow.
Many Ukrainians, from civilians to military commentators, lambasted commanders for the decision to hold a ceremony so close to the front line, as well as for the tendency to maintain outdated practices and traditions during a brutal war.
“Technology makes it difficult to hide anything: Enemies know everything about one another,” Yevhen Dykiy, a former soldier with the Aidar battalion.
Moreover, he asserted that Russian forces have an advantage over Ukraine when it comes to long-range missiles and intelligence. If Russian drones weren’t the ones to spot the ceremony, he said, then perhaps signals from cell-phone SIM cards or even villagers with Russian sympathies were to blame.
"The most painful thing is that these guys shouldn’t have died,” Dykiy said. “This didn’t happen in battle. It happened precisely because of the negligence of one of the commanders. This is an example of the fact that in war the most expensive price to be paid is for laziness and for underestimating the enemy.”
'My Wife Suffered The Most'
Also among the wounded were civilians: village residents living in nearby houses. A total of nine -- four men and five women -- were badly wounded. Four were members of Oleksandr Panchenko’s family.
He said his mother-in-law lived in a house just across the street from the site of the blast. His wife’s mother had asked for help doing some chores, including culling ducks from her flock. His wife and her sister were helping when the missile hit.
“My wife suffered the most,” Panchenko told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service. “She has broken bones and open shrapnel wounds in her arms and legs. Her hand, thank God, was saved. The vascular surgeons were very good. She lost a lot of blood.”
“Everything is destroyed there. The kitchen, the garage. It was a good house,” he said. “Now we’re just taking things out, transporting what’s left to our apartment. The building there is beyond repair. It’s broken to pieces.”
Zarichne had around 1,500 residents before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. About half of them remain, Panchenko said, despite the proximity to the front lines.
“Of course, we’ve been fired upon,” he said. “During this whole time, maybe six times we’ve been hit with S-300s”-- a type of Russian-built surface-to-air missile that has been known to go astray.
“The village council building was hit in December,” he said. “It’s a pity. But there were no injuries then.”
“There was a lot of shrapnel everywhere,” another villager, who asked not to publish her name, said of the November 3 attack. “Those people who were at home, under cover, they were saved by their homes. People who were outside, they got hit with shrapnel.”
'I Recommend Visiting Churches And Praying For Our Defenders'
The ceremony that the soldiers were summoned to attend was officially meant to mark Artillery and Missile Forces Day. It’s a commemoration that dates back to the Soviet era -- and, critics said, a reflection of Soviet traditions that Ukraine has not fully shed.
Two days after the missile strike, a surveillance video purportedly taken by a Russian drone circulated on the Telegram channel of a Russian war blogger. The video, which identified the village using an older Russian name, showed a gathering of vehicles and a sizable group of military personnel, followed by an explosion and a plume of smoke.
The video was later all but corroborated by Ukrainian officials and commentators who identified the village while criticizing commanders.
Yuriy Hudymenko, a Ukrainian soldier who was badly wounded last year and has now gone into politics, said Ukraine’s military command must adapt and move away from a Soviet-style mentality, which he said was to blame for the deaths at Zarichne.
"We need not just punishment for those who put the boys from the 128th under attack. We need change: modernization and learning from our mistakes, if we can't learn from others," he said in an angry post to Facebook.
“I recommend visiting churches and praying for our defenders,” Viktor Mykyta, the head of the military administration in Zakarpattya, the western region where most of the soldiers came from, said in a post to Facebook.
