Ukrainian Missile Strike Kills Russian 8th Army Communications Chief in Donetsk

A Ukrainian missile strike on the command post of Russia’s 8th Guards Combined Arms Army in occupied Donetsk has killed the army’s head of communications, Colonel Vasily Skirnevsky.

The death of Col. Skirnevsky was confirmed in an obituary published by the administration of the Parabelsky district in Russia’s Tomsk region, where he was born. OSINT analyst Necro Mancer first noticed this obituary.

According to the post, Skirnevsky was a graduate of the Tomsk Higher Military Command School of Communications and the “Military University of Communications.”

He previously served in the Central Communications Center of Russia’s Internal Troops and held a number of other military positions before joining the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 as a communications officer in a Russian regiment.

The missile strike on the Russian headquarters occurred late on June 30. Ukrainian military blogger Anatoliy Shtefan was among the first to report the death of senior Russian officers in the attack, including Colonel Ruslan Goryachkin, the commander of the 8th Combined Arms Army. That information has not been independently verified.

The Ukrainian General Staff commented that the high-precision strike would “significantly complicate the enemy’s ability to plan and conduct operations in the Pokrovsk and Toretsk directions.”

It added: “The Ukrainian Defense Forces will continue to systematically destroy the command and control infrastructure of the aggressor’s armed forces.”

The 8th Guards Combined Arms Army is one of the key Russian formations involved in combat operations in eastern Ukraine, including near Avdiivka and the Donetsk region.