Kyiv, Ukraine –
Russia has opened a criminal investigation after gunmen shot dead 11 people at a military training camp near the Ukrainian border, authorities said on Sunday, as fighting raged in eastern and southern Ukraine.
Russia’s RIA news agency, citing the Defense Ministry, said two gunmen opened fire during a firearms training exercise on Saturday against a group that had volunteered to fight in Ukraine. The “terrorists” themselves were shot to death, she said.
The incident is the latest blow to President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine and comes a week after an explosion damaged a bridge linking mainland Russia with Crimea, the peninsula he annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the attackers were from a former Soviet republic, without giving further details. A senior Ukrainian official, Oleksiy Arestovych, said the two men were from Tajikistan, a Muslim-majority Central Asian republic, and had opened fire on each other after an argument about religion.
Reuters could not immediately confirm the comments by Arestovych, a leading commentator on the war, or independently verify the number of casualties and other details.
“As a result of the incident at a shooting range in the Belgorod region, 11 people died from gunshot wounds and 15 others were injured,” the Russian Investigative Committee said, announcing the criminal investigation. He did not give any other details.
Some independent Russian media outlets reported that the number of victims was higher than the official figures.
Belgorod region governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said no local residents were among those killed or injured.
Two witnesses later told Reuters they had seen Russian air defense systems repelling airstrikes in Belgorod. Gladkov said two people were injured after the shelling, according to preliminary reports.
Putin said on Friday that Russia should finish calling up reservists within two weeks, promising an end to a divisive mobilization that has seen hundreds of thousands of men called up to fight in Ukraine and many fleeing the country.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a strong Putin ally, said last week that his troops would be deployed with Russian forces near the Ukrainian border, citing what he said were threats from Ukraine and the West.
The Belarusian Defense Ministry in Minsk said on Sunday that just under 9,000 Russian soldiers would be stationed in Belarus as part of a “regional grouping” of forces to protect its borders.
ATTACKS
In the 24 hours of Sunday morning, Russian forces attacked more than 30 cities and towns in Ukraine, launching five missile attacks, 23 air strikes and up to 60 rocket attacks, the Armed Forces General Staff said on Sunday. from Ukraine.
In response, the Ukrainian air forces carried out 32 strikes, hitting 24 Russian targets.
Fighting has been particularly intense this weekend in the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, and in the strategically important Kherson province in the south, three of the four provinces that Putin proclaimed as part of Russia last month.
Shelling by Ukrainian forces damaged the administration building in the city of Donetsk, the capital of the Donetsk region, the head of the Russian-backed administration said on Sunday.
“It was a direct hit, the building is badly damaged. It’s a miracle no one was killed,” Alexei Kulemzin said, surveying the wreckage, adding that all city services were still working.
There was no immediate reaction from Ukraine to the attack on the city of Donetsk, which was annexed by Russian-backed separatists in 2014 along with swaths of the eastern Donbas region.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Sunday that its forces had repelled efforts by Ukrainian troops to advance into the Donetsk, Kherson and Mykolaiv regions, inflicting what it described as significant losses.
Russia also said it was continuing air strikes against military and energy targets in Ukraine, using long-range precision-guided weapons.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the battlefield reports.
In the town of Mykolaiv, residents lined up Sunday, as they do every day, to fill up bottles of water at a distribution point after supplies were cut off by fighting earlier in the war.
“This is not war, this is a war crime. War is when soldiers fight each other, but when fighting civilians, it is a war crime,” said Vadym Antonyuk, a 51-year-old sales manager, as he stood by foot. online.
‘EVEN THE SEA IS ON OUR SIDE’
The spokeswoman for Ukraine’s Southern Military Command said Russian forces were suffering from severe shortages of equipment, including ammunition, as a result of damage inflicted on the Crimean bridge last weekend.
“Almost 75 percent (of Russian military supplies in southern Ukraine) passed through that bridge,” Natalia Humeniuk told Ukrainian television, adding that strong winds had also stopped ferries in the area.
“Now even the sea is on our side,” he said.
Putin blamed the Ukrainian security services for the bridge explosion and last Monday, in retaliation, ordered the biggest air offensive against Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Kyiv, since the beginning of the Russian invasion on February 24.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said his forces still controlled the strategic eastern city of Bakhmut despite repeated Russian attacks, while the situation in the larger Donbas region remained very difficult.
Russian forces have repeatedly tried to seize Bakhmut, which is on a main road leading to the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. Both are located in the Donetsk region.
Although Ukrainian troops have recaptured thousands of square kilometers (miles) of land in recent offensives in the east and south, officials say progress is likely to slow once Kyiv forces encounter more determined resistance.
Zelenskiy said nearly 65,000 Russians had been killed so far since the Feb. 24 invasion, far higher than Moscow’s official Sept. 21 estimate of 5,937 dead. In August, the Pentagon said that Russia had suffered between 70,000 and 80,000 casualties, including those killed or wounded.
Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said on Telegram on Sunday that Ukraine would prevail in the war due to continued military aid it receives from the West and the cumulative impact of Western sanctions on Russia’s economy.
“Ukraine’s offensive is strategic and Russia’s defeat is inevitable,” Yermak said.