Ukrainian soldier and Mortar Battery Commander Taras Lukinchuk, prepares to fire a mortar round on New Years Eve. Reuters

The Russian defence ministry has made a rare admission of losing dozens of troops in one of the deadliest attacks launched by Ukraine on New Year’s eve.

At least 63 soldiers have been killed in a single attack on temporary barracks of Russian troops in a destroyed college in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk, officials in Moscow said.

This comes as Mr Zelensky has warned of a prolonged attack by Russian troops using "Shaheds" and confirmed that the Ukrainian soldiers have shot down more than eighty Iranian drones in the last two days.

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"This number may increase in the near future. Because these weeks the nights can be quite restless," he warned.

Russia's bet "may be on exhaustion — on exhaustion of our people, our air defense, our energy sector", he said.

Russian military bloggers were irate after the Kremlin admitted the troop deaths, accusing commanders of “criminal naivety”.

Critical Russian bloggers slam military strategy in Makiivka: ‘Horrible’

The Russian bloggers tracking the war in Ukraine came down heavily on the failures of Moscow’s military strategy in the aftermath of the blast in Makiivka which killed at least 63 Russian soldiers in one attack.

“Hundreds had been killed or wounded in the blast. Ammunition had been stored at the site and military equipment there was uncamouflaged,” said Igor Girkin, former commander of pro-Russian soldiers in eastern Ukraine and now the top most Russian nationalist military blogger.

Another Russian military blogger Archangel Spetznaz Zi with more than 700,000 followers on the Telegram termed the attack on barracks in Makiivka “horrible”.

"Who came up with the idea to place personnel in large numbers in one building, where even a fool understands that even if they hit with artillery, there will be many wounded or dead?" he wrote. Commanders "couldn’t care less" about ammunition stored in disarray on the battlefield, he said.

The Independent