An attack on an oil depot in Russian-occupied Crimea that caused a huge fire and sent a column of black smoke into the sky was part of the Ukrainian preparations for a counteroffensivea Ukrainian military spokesman said on Sunday.
Saturday morning’s fire in the city of Sevastopol, headquarters of the Russian navy’s Black Sea Fleet, is the latest example of what appears to be the next stage of a conflict which for months was marked by fierce fighting, creeping advances and deadly bombing along the front line and across the border between the two countries.
The depot fire, according to the spokeswoman of the Southern Command of Ukraine Natalia Humeniuk, is part of the preparations for “the large-scale and large-scale offensive that the whole world is waiting for.”
The spokeswoman told Ukrainian television on Sunday that it was crucial attack Russia’s logistical capability before the counteroffensive.
Russian authorities attributed the explosion to a drone attack who managed to go far beyond the front lines of combat.
Just over 24 hours later, Russian forces demonstrated their ability to strike targets in enemy territory.
Pavlograd, a city far from the front line in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region, has been rocked by explosions, according to social media and city mayor Anatoly Vershina.
Videos and photos shared on social networks and reviewed by The New York Times they seemed to show the aftermath of a huge explosion within the city.
Several images also showed what appeared to be secondary explosions.
Local Telegram channels shared photos of broken windows and damage to homes following reports of an explosion.
It is unclear whether there were any casualties.
Hours later, air raid sirens sounded across Ukraine and authorities warned residents to take cover from possible Russian missile attacks.
Russia has been able to launch deadly attacks far from the front lines, including an airstrike on Friday that killed more than two dozen people.
But it was unable to break through the Ukrainian defenses to the east, making only small gains as both sides suffered heavy losses.
This gave Ukraine hope of an imminent counteroffensive, with a swath of land just north of Crimea seen as a likely target.
Russia retained that territory, in regions dand Zaporizhia and Kherson along the Azov Sea coast, since shortly after the invasion.
The pace of attacks in Crimea and on cities like Melitopol in the Zaporizhzhia region has picked up in recent weeks, a possible sign of their importance to an upcoming counter-offensive that will be fueled by new supplies of advanced Western military equipment, including tanks and armored personnel carriers. couriers who have already arrived in the country.
Although the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyhe claims to recover Crimea it is a national priority, Ukrainian officials and military experts say very unlikely that the peninsula is the immediate objective of the next campaign.
Crimea is well beyond Russian lines and Russia has been trying to bolster its defenses along the coast, placing land mines and building obstacles to slow down tanks.
Both Ukraine and Russia suffered heavy casualties in heavy ground campaigns in the Donbass region, especially around the city of Bakhmut, with the south and east of the country believed to be the most likely locations for the next Ukrainian offensive.
However, the bombing continues to be a constant in the daily life of civilians in both countries in regions far from the most intense fighting.
On Sunday, four civilians were killed when a Ukrainian shelling hit a Russian village near Ukraine’s northeastern border, according to Bryansk region governor Alexander Bogomaz. You
Two people were also injured when several rockets hit the town of Suzemka, about 10 kilometers from the border with the Sumy region of Ukraine.
Sumy itself has been a frequent target of Russian shelling in recent months, with the regional military administration saying on Sunday that Russian forces had fired a total of 57 bullets against nine communities overnight, although no injuries were reported.
Ukrainian authorities said two civilians died in Russian shelling on Sunday, both in the south of the country.
The shelling killed a woman and wounded a man in the Kherson region, where Russia attacked territory recaptured from Ukrainian forces last fall, and one person was killed and two injured in Nikopol in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
Neither country’s claims regarding civilian casualties could be independently verified.
Biden praises its “absolute value“ of the arrested American journalist
President Joe Biden, Speaking at the White House Association’s annual dinner of correspondents on Saturday, he said the US was “working every day” to secure the release of Evan GershkovicAmerican journalist for The Wall Street Journal imprisoned in Russia.
Gershkovich was arrested in Russia in March and charged with espionage, a charge his employer and the United States strongly deny.
Earlier this month, the State Department called the journalist “wrongfully detained,” meaning the US government considers him the equivalent of a political hostage.
Biden spoke on Gershkovich’s “absolute worth” on Saturday, saying everyone in attendance at the event was with the reporter.
“Our message is this: The journalism is not a crime“, She said.
The Gershkovich case represents the most significant attack on international journalists in Russia since the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion.
It is also the first time a Western journalist has been accused of spying in Russia since the end of the Cold War.
In his speech he also spoke about Biden Austin Dudea freelance journalist who disappeared in Syria in August 2012, shortly after the country’s civil war began.
He is believed to have been held captive by the president’s government ever since. Bashar Assad.
“Evan and Austin must be released immediately, along with all other Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained overseas,” Biden said.
Change in the Russian Ministry of Defense
Russia’s Defense Ministry announced on Sunday a reorganization of its top leadership, to replace its own Logistics Manager after just seven months in office.
Colonel General Mikhail Y. Mizintsev -nicknamed the “Butcher Mariupolby Western officials – took office in late September following an embarrassing defeat by Russian forces in northeastern Ukraine.
But Russia has struggled to advance on the battlefield since taking over logistics, making only marginal territorial gains in eastern Ukraine.
Mizintsev, 60, was placed on international sanctions lists and charged with atrocities for his role in the brutal siege of the southern port city of Mariupol.
Russia’s defense ministry did not directly announce its firing or say what it would do next.
Instead, he limited himself to saying that Colonel General Aleksey Kuzmenkov had been appointed to head the “Combat Support Service of the Russian Armed Forces”.
Kuzmenkov has served since 2019 as the troop chief of the Russian National Guard, the ministry said in a statement posted on Telegram.
Fight for Bakhmut’s “path of life”.
Despite heavy fighting, Russian forces have so far failed to capture a key supply route to the Ukrainian defense of the besieged city of Bakhmut, the spokesman of Ukraine’s Army Group Eastern said on Saturday.
Keeping the route open between Bakhmut and the town of Chasiv Yar, a few kilometers to the west, has been crucial to the Ukrainian campaign wait to the city in the face of the Russian assault that began last summer.
The Bakhmut area was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting on the Eastern Front.
“For several weeks now, the Russians have been talking about seizing the ‘highway of life’ as well as constant fire control on it,” said the spokesman, Serhiy Cherevatyi.
Although he called the situation “difficult,” he told a Ukrainian news site that Russian forces have been unable to cut the route to Chasiv Yar, one of the two main routes leading west from Bakhmut.
Bakhmut, where some 70,000 people lived, is now in ruins.
While its strategic value is debatable, the city has symbolic importance to both sides, who have sought to deplete and bog down each other’s forces.
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Source: Clarin
Mary Ortiz is a seasoned journalist with a passion for world events. As a writer for News Rebeat, she brings a fresh perspective to the latest global happenings and provides in-depth coverage that offers a deeper understanding of the world around us.