KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian forces fired rockets at a facility in the eastern Donetsk region where Russian soldiers were stationed, killing 63 of them, Russia’s defense ministry said Monday, in one of the deadliest attacks on the Kremlin’s forces since the war began more than 10 months ago.

Ukrainian forces fired six rockets from a HIMARS launch system and two of them were shot down, a defense ministry statement said. It did not say when the strike happened.

The strike, using a U.S.-supplied precision weapon that has proven critical in enabling Ukrainian forces to hit key targets, delivered a new setback for Russia which in recent months has reeled from a Ukrainian counteroffensive.

According to the governor of Russia’s Samara region, Dmitry Azarov, an unspecified number of residents of the region were among those killed and wounded by the strike on the town of Makiivka.

Russian military bloggers, whose information has largely been reliable during the war, said ammunition stored close to the facility had exploded in the attack and contributed to the high number of casualties.

Expressing anger at the losses, Daniil Bezsonov, an official with the Russian-appointed administration in Russian-occupied Donetsk, called for the punishment of military officers who ordered a large number of troops to be stationed at the facility.

The Ukrainian military appeared to acknowledge the attack Monday, with the General Staff confirming that Makiivka was hit on Dec. 31, and saying 10 Russian military vehicles were destroyed or damaged. It added that Russian personnel losses were still being clarified.

In a claim that could not be independently verified, the Strategic Communications Directorate of Ukraine’s Armed Forces had maintained Sunday that some 400 mobilized Russian soldiers were killed in a vocational school building in Makiivka and about 300 more were wounded. The Russian statement said the strike occurred “in the area of Makiivka” and didn’t mention the vocational school.

Meanwhile, Russia deployed multiple exploding drones in another nighttime attack on Ukraine, officials said Monday, as the Kremlin signaled no letup in its strategy of using bombardments to target the country’s energy infrastructure and wear down Ukrainian resistance to its invasion.

The barrage was the latest in a series of relentless year-end attacks, including one that killed three civilians on New Year’s Eve.

On Monday, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that 40 drones “headed for Kyiv” overnight. All of them were destroyed, according to air defense forces.

Klitschko said 22 drones were destroyed over Kyiv, three in the outlying Kyiv region and 15 over neighboring provinces.

Energy infrastructure facilities were damaged as the result of the attack and an explosion occurred in one city district, the mayor said. It wasn’t immediately clear whether that was caused by drones or other munitions. A wounded 19-year-old man was hospitalized, Klitschko added, and emergency power outages were underway in the capital.

In the outlying Kyiv region a “critical infrastructure object” and residential buildings were hit, Gov. Oleksiy Kuleba said.

Russia has carried out airstrikes on Ukrainian power and water supplies almost weekly since October.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russia of “energy terrorism” as the aerial bombardments have left many people without heat amid freezing temperatures. Ukrainian officials say Moscow is “weaponizing winter” in its effort to demoralize the Ukrainian resistance.

Ukraine is using sophisticated Western-supplied weapons to help shoot down Russia’s missiles and drones, as well as send artillery fire into Russian-held areas of the country.

Moscow’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24 has gone awry, putting pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin as his ground forces struggle to hold ground and advance. He said in his New Year’s address to the nation that 2022 was “a year of difficult, necessary decisions.”

Putin insists he had no choice but to send troops into Ukraine because it threatened Russia’s security — an assertion condemned by the West, which says Moscow bears full responsibility for the war.

Russia is currently observing public holidays through Jan. 8.

Drones, missiles and artillery shells launched by Russian forces also struck areas across Ukraine.

Five people were wounded in the Monday morning shelling of a Ukraine-controlled area of the southern Kherson region, its Ukrainian Gov. Yaroslav Yanushevich said on Telegram.

The Russian forces attacked the city of Beryslav, the official said, firing at a local market, likely from a tank. Three of the wounded are in serious condition and are being evacuated to Kherson, Yanushevich said.

Seven drones were shot down over the southern Mykolaiv region, according to Gov. Vitali Kim, and three more were shot down in the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said.

In the Dnipropetrovsk region, a missile was also destroyed, according to Reznichenko. He said that energy infrastructure in the region was being targeted.

Ukraine’s Air Force Command reported Monday that 39 Iranian-made exploding Shahed drones were shot down overnight, as well as two Russian-made Orlan drones and a X-59 missile.

“We are staying strong,” the Ukrainian defense ministry tweeted.

A blistering New Year’s Eve assault killed at least four civilians across the country, Ukrainian authorities reported, and wounded dozens. The fourth victim, a 46-year-old resident of Kyiv, died in a hospital on Monday morning, Klitschko said.

Multiple blasts rocked the capital and other areas of Ukraine on Saturday and through the night. The strikes came 36 hours after widespread missile attacks Russia launched Thursday to damage energy infrastructure facilities, and the unusually quick follow-up alarmed Ukrainian officials.

In Russia, a Ukrainian drone hit an energy facility in the Bryansk region that borders with Ukraine, Bryansk regional governor Alexander Bogomaz reported on Monday morning. A village was left without power as a result, he said.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Russia’s announced retreat from Kherson, a regional capital in southern Ukraine that it seized early in the war, and a potential stalemate in fighting over the winter could provide both countries an opportunity to negotiate peace, Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday.

He said as many as 40,000 Ukrainian civilians and “well over” 100,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the war, now in its ninth month. “Same thing probably on the Ukrainian side,” Milley added.

“There has been a tremendous amount of suffering, human suffering,” he said at The Economic Club of New York.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday he was open to peace talks with Russia to end the war but only on the condition that Russia return all of Ukraine’s occupied lands, provide compensation for war damage and face prosecution for war crimes.

Russia has said it is open to talks, and this week announced it had begun a retreat from Kherson.

Zelenskyy has warned that the Russians are feigning a pullout from Kherson to lure the Ukrainian army into an entrenched battle in the strategic industrial port city, a gateway to the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula.

Milley, the highest-ranking U.S. military officer, said Russia had amassed 20,000 to 30,000 troops in Kherson and a full retreat could take several weeks.

“The initial indicators are they are in fact doing it. They made the public announcement they’re doing it. I believe they’re doing it in order to preserve their force to reestablish defensive lines south of the (Dnieper) river, but that remains to be seen” he said.

Milley said it’s possible the Russians will use the retreat to reset their troops for a spring offensive, but “there’s also an opportunity here, a window of opportunity for negotiation.”

But for negotiations to have a chance, both Russia and Ukraine would have to reach a “mutual recognition” that a military victory “is maybe not achievable through military means, and therefore you need to turn to other means,” Milley said, citing the end of World War I as an example.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Wednesday made a formal determination that Russian troops have committed war crimes in Ukraine and said it would work with others to prosecute offenders, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

“Today, I can announce that, based on information currently available, the U.S. government assesses that members of Russia’s forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine,” Blinken said in a statement released as he was traveling to Brussels with President Joe Biden for an emergency summit of NATO leaders.

The assessment was based on a “careful review” of public and intelligence sources since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last month, he said.

America’s top diplomat said the United States would share that information with allies, partners and international institutions tasked with investigating allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“We’ve seen numerous credible reports of indiscriminate attacks and attacks deliberately targeting civilians, as well as other atrocities. Russia’s forces have destroyed apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, critical infrastructure, civilian vehicles, shopping centers, and ambulances, leaving thousands of innocent civilians killed or wounded,” Blinken said said.

He cited attacks on the civilian population in the besieged city of Mariupol and elsewhere.

Neither Russia nor the U.S. recognizes the authority of the International Criminal Court at The Hague, presenting obvious difficulties for seeking accountability for war crimes committed in Ukraine.

The U.S. could still assist a prosecution before the court, which earlier opened an investigation into atrocities committed in Ukraine, by helping to gather evidence against Russian forces in Ukraine, using some of the vast abilities it has deployed to track and monitor what has been happening in the conflict.

The U.S. could also provide support and backing to a commission of inquiry established by the U.N. Human Rights Council.

War crimes experts have suggested that Russian forces and government officials could also be prosecuted in countries such as Spain and Germany, where legal codes recognize universal jurisdiction, or that the U.S. could bring criminal charges.

Under U.S. law, an American citizen would have to be among the victims for charges to brought under existing statutes.

Two Democratic members of Congress urged Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday to open an investigation into war crimes for the deaths of two Americans in Ukraine — journalist Brent Renaud and Jimmy Hill, who was killed while waiting in a bread line.

“Both Mr. Renaud and Mr. Hill were non-combatants who were not taking any active part in the hostilities, wrote Reps. Ted Lieu and Rep. Eric Swalwell, both from California.

The Department of Justice did not immediately comment on the letter.

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