The pro-Russian authorities in Crimea accused Ukraine this Saturday of having blown up an ammunition depot with drones, which caused several explosions and the evacuation of the population around it, as well as the temporary closure of the Kerch bridge, the only one that connects the peninsula to mainland Russia. , causing the evacuation of the surrounding population and the suspension of rail traffic on this annexed peninsula A drone attack this Saturday caused several explosions in an ammunition arsenal in central Crimea,
The detonations forced the evacuation of the population of the Krasnogvardeiski district within a radius of five kilometers, according to the head of the annexed Ukrainian peninsula, Sergei Axiónov.
In addition, in order to “minimize risks”, the local government decided to temporarily interrupt rail traffic on the peninsula. The attack has already forced the stoppage of four long-distance trains – two from Moscow and one from Saint Petersburg – whose passengers will be transferred to their rest destinations by bus.
For security reasons, road traffic was also temporarily suspended this morning on the bridge over the Kerch Strait, the only structure linking the peninsula to the mainland and used in particular to transport equipment to Russian soldiers on the Ukrainian front.
This Saturday is the fourth attack allegedly committed by Ukraine this week against Crimea, a territory that Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky assures that Kyiv wants to recover at all costs. Russia unilaterally annexed it to its territory in 2014.
Addressing the Aspen Security Forum via video link on Friday, the Ukrainian president ruled that the Kerch bridge, which he said was built in violation of international law, must be “neutralized.”
On Monday, the Crimean bridge suffered the second attack since the start of the war at the hands of two aquatic drones, after which in retaliation Russia has bombarded several Ukrainian port terminals on the Black Sea in recent days.
On Wednesday enemy drones also hit a military training camp in the said territory, where explosions went off and a fire broke out. On Thursday, another drone attack caused the death of a teenager and damage to four administrative buildings, Axiónov denounced.
For this reason, the Russian tourism industry acknowledged this week that the season in Crimea will be bad and that the number of visitors could be reduced by up to 30%.
The Russian army for its part announced on Saturday that a journalist from the Russian news agency Ria Novosti, Rostislav Zhuravliov, had been killed the same day in a Ukrainian shelling in the Zaporizhia region in southern Ukraine. “Units of the Ukrainian armed forces launched an artillery attack against a group of journalists,” “injuring four journalists more or less seriously,” he accused.
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs described this Saturday as an “atrocious crime” the death of the journalist, which it considers premeditated and for which it holds the West and Kyiv “responsible”. He also promised a response to the attack. “Everything indicates that the attack on the group of journalists was not carried out by chance,” Russian diplomacy said in a statement.
At the same time, the German public television channel Deutsche Welle reported that one of its Ukrainian cameramen had been injured by Russian cluster bombs while reporting on the Ukrainian army near the front line.
