Russia’s strategic Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, home to its Black Sea fleet, was targeted by a drone strike on Tuesday, with Russian forces on “alert”.
• Read more: Ukraine says it has found four ‘torture sites’ used by the Russians in Kherson
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• Read more: More than 100 Ukrainians disappeared in Kherson during Russian occupation, US study finds
“There is an attack by drones,” Mikhail Razvozhayev, the governor of the Sevastopol administrative region in Crimea (founded by Moscow) in the south, said in a telegram. “Our air defense forces are active at this moment,” he added, calling on residents to “remain calm.”
Mr. According to Rasvojayev, there were no casualties and no civilian infrastructure was damaged.
He said the air defense forces had shot down two drones near the Balaklava power station which had come under attack in the past. “The city is quiet now,” Mr. Rasvozhayev said. “But all the forces and services are preparing for war.”
The Russian Black Sea Fleet is based in the port of Sevastopol. He was attacked there in late October in what pro-Russian officials called a “massive” drone attack by the Ukrainian military.
The move, which damaged at least one Russian military ship, led Moscow to briefly withdraw from a deal that allowed it to export Ukrainian grain.
Kiev has inflicted several insults on the Russian Navy, whose cruise missiles regularly strike its territory. In the spring, Ukraine specifically sank the Russian flagship Moskva.
Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and its military continues to push Moscow back in southern Ukraine, aiming to retake it.
Russian forces attacked Ukraine from multiple directions, including Crimea, at the start of the invasion on February 24.
The region’s governor said last week that authorities are strengthening their positions on the peninsula as Kyiv forces retake areas in the neighboring Kherson region.
In August, a drone attack against Russian naval headquarters in Sevastopol resulted in no injuries.
But on July 31, another of these machines landed in a public servants’ yard, injuring five of its employees and canceling military ceremonies scheduled for the day.
According to Ukrainian officials, Ukrainians and Russians clashed on the frontline on Tuesday at the Kinborn tip.
“We have three locations (to be taken) on the Kinborn Peninsula,” regional governor Vitaly Kim said before fully liberating the Mykolaiv (southern) region.
The Ukrainian army captured the last three villages in the Mykolaiv region from Russian hands, days after Moscow expelled troops from the then-occupied main Ukrainian city of Kherson, marking another major victory for Kiev. A two-month counterattack. Russia captured the region in the early days of its invasion.
In Kherson, the Ukrainian state prosecutor’s office announced on Monday that it had discovered four “torture sites” before the Russians were forced to withdraw from the region, with Kyiv accusing Moscow of war crimes – a case already in place. Many areas were retaken from the Russians.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian investigators said they had arrested for “treason” — a life sentence in Ukraine — an officer at a Russian detention center in Kherson.
“From the first days of the occupation of Kherson, the employee of this detention center worked for the invaders … as a manager of detention centers and places of execution of sentences,” he said. Ukrainian State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) said in a statement.
In Russia, explosions killed three people in the Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine, and the governor of the region on Tuesday said it was suffering from a fire blamed on the Ukrainian military, where fortifications were being built.
In a telegram, Governor Vyacheslav Kladkov said a woman had died in the bombing in the town of Sebekino, eight kilometers from Ukraine.
According to the same source, two people died when “unidentified explosives” exploded in the village of Starocheli on the border with Ukraine.
The regional capital, also known as Belgorod, has already been directly affected on several occasions.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, ordered the construction of fortifications in the Russian regions of Belgorod and Kursk, as well as in the Moscow-occupied Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine. Last week, Moscow announced reinforcement operations in Crimea.
On the diplomatic front, Ukraine’s foreign minister warned the European Union on Tuesday that it appears to be fighting “fatigue” in the face of war in Ukraine, urging it to accept new economic sanctions against Moscow.
“If we, Ukrainians, are not tired, the rest of Europe has no moral or political right to be tired,” the minister emphasized.
For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on French mayors to help his country prevent this winter from being used as a “weapon of mass destruction.” ) in Paris.
