(Kyiv) Ukraine said on Monday it had targeted a base of the paramilitary group Wagner, whose men are accused of fighting alongside Russian troops, and destroyed a bridge near the occupied town of Melitopol.
Posted at 10:19 a.m.
According to the governor of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, the base of this private military company in the town of Propasna was “destroyed by a precision strike”. The shooting took place on Sunday, Serguiï Gaïdaï said on Telegram.
Very opaque, the Wagner group is reputed to be linked to the Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigojine, himself considered close to President Vladimir Putin. The presence of its fighters has been confirmed in recent years in Syria, Libya, Mali and other African countries.
The Ukrainian authorities also claimed that pro-Kyiv saboteurs managed to blow up a railway bridge near the town of Melitopol (Zaropijjia region, south), occupied by the Russian army, in a new effort to disrupt the logistics of troops from Moscow.
“One less railway bridge to the southwest of Melitopol means a total absence of military trains from Crimea”, a peninsula annexed in 2014 by Russia and essential to the supplies of the Russian army, announced on Telegram the mayor of Melitopol Ivan Fedorov.
Ukraine has targeted several bridges in recent weeks, mainly in the occupied region of Kherson, where Kyiv says it is carrying out a counter-offensive that has made it possible to retake dozens of villages and now threaten Russian troops who have crossed the Dnieper river.
In the Odessa region, on the Black Sea, three summer visitors were killed on Monday and two others injured, while bathing on a beach in Zatoka, a popular seaside resort, by the detonation of an “unknown explosive device “, announced on Telegram a spokesperson for the regional authorities, Serguiï Bratchouk.
In the morning, Russian bombardments on Kharkiv, the second city of the country, left at least one dead and six injured, said on Facebook a senior local police officer, Serguiï Bolvinov.