(Kyiv) Ukraine said on Monday it had targeted a base of the paramilitary group Wagner in the east, whose men are accused of fighting alongside Russian troops, and destroyed a bridge near the occupied city of Melitopol (south). .
Updated yesterday at 2:48 p.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 Russian 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 (south), 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 region of Odessa (South), 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 a ” unknown explosive device, ”a spokesman for the regional authorities, Serguiï Bratchouk, announced on Telegram.
And in the morning, Russian bombardments on Kharkiv (North-East), the second city of the country, left one dead, said on Facebook a senior local police official, Serguiï Bolvinov.
PHOTO UKRAINIAN EMERGENCY SERVICES, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A rescue worker inspects a crater formed by Russian shelling in Kharkiv.
“At 11 a.m. Kharkiv was shelled. Nine people were injured. Unfortunately, a 75-year-old woman died in hospital from her injuries,” Kharkiv region governor Oleg Synegubov confirmed in a video posted on Telegram.
“There were other shellings elsewhere in the region,” he added. “Three people injured in these bombings have been hospitalized.”
In the Donetsk region (East), where the forces are currently concentrating their assault after having taken almost all of the neighboring region of Luhansk, “the situation remains tense” and “the front line is under bombs”, indicated regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko in a video posted on his Telegram channel.
“Sloviansk was shelled overnight. And practically every day Bakhmut, Siversk and Soledar are bombed,” he continued. “Mariinka, Krangogorivka and Avdiivka are also constantly shelled. Almost three quarters of the region’s population was evacuated. It still remains a quarter of the population.
At the end of July, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that the evacuation of the Donetsk region was compulsory, particularly in anticipation of winter, the destruction of gas distribution networks risking depriving housing of heating.
Five foreigners tried as “mercenaries”
Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine on Monday began trying three Britons, a Croat and a Swede accused of fighting with the Ukrainian army, which could earn them the death penalty.
The “Supreme Court” of the separatist region of Donetsk has opened the trial of John Harding, Andrew Hill, Dylan Healy, originally from the United Kingdom, as well as Croatian Vjekoslav Prebeg and Swede Mathias Gustafsson, Russian media reported.
PHOTO ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO, REUTERS
Left to right: Andrew Hill, Dylan Healy, Vjekoslav Prebeg, John Harding and Mathias Gustafsson during their hearing in Donetsk
MM. Harding, Prebeg and Gustafsson, taken prisoner in the area of the Ukrainian port of Mariupol, besieged and bombarded for weeks by the Russian army, incur the death penalty, according to a judge quoted by the news agency TASS.
According to the Ria-Novosti agency, these three men who are at risk of execution are being prosecuted for attempting to “take power by force” and for “participating in an armed conflict as a mercenary”.
The Briton Andrew Hill is only accused of mercenary, while Dylan Healy is prosecuted for “having participated in the recruitment of mercenaries” in favor of Ukraine, according to the Ria-Novosti agency.
The court indicated that the trial of the five accused will not resume until early October, without giving any explanation on the reasons for this delay. They have all pleaded not guilty, according to Russian media.
In early June, two British fighters and a Moroccan had already been sentenced to death by Donetsk separatists. They appealed this decision.
A moratorium on the death penalty has been in force in Russia since 1997, but this is not the case in the two separatist territories in eastern Ukraine.
Negotiations with the UN on Zaporizhia
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and UN chief Antonio Guterres discussed on Monday the safety of the Moscow-controlled Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, where it is targeted by bombings .
“Sergei Shoigu conducted telephone negotiations with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres regarding the conditions for safe operation of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
The Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, was taken in early March by Russian troops, at the start of their large-scale offensive in Ukraine, launched on February 24.
Since the end of July, several strikes, of which the two parties accuse each other, have targeted the site, raising fears of a nuclear disaster and provoking a meeting of the UN Security Council last Thursday.
Kyiv accuses Moscow of using the plant as an attack base and a depot for equipment. Supported by its Western allies, Ukraine calls for the demilitarization of the area and the withdrawal of forces from Moscow.
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, MM. Shoigu and Guterres also spoke on Monday of the explosions that hit the Olenivka prison in late July, in the separatist region of Donetsk (eastern Ukraine), resulting in the death of dozens of Ukrainian prisoners.
Kyiv accuses Moscow of having massacred these detainees. Moscow denies and asserts on the contrary that the Ukrainian army bombarded the prison camp.