Drone blows up Russian ammunition depot in Crimea, say local officials

A Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow-annexed Crimea has caused the ‘detonation’ of an ammunition depot, prompting evacuations, according to local officials.

A Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow-annexed Crimea caused the “detonation” of an ammunition depot on Saturday, the Moscow-installed leader of the peninsula said, ordering the evacuation of people living within five kilometres of the attack and halting rail traffic.

The attack came five days after the only bridge linking annexed Crimea to Russia was hit, killing two people.

Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014, has been targeted throughout Russia’s Ukraine offensive but has come under increasing attack in recent weeks.

“As a result of an enemy drone on the Krasnogvardeisky district, there was a detonation at an ammunition depot,” official Sergei Aksyonov said on Telegram.

“A decision was taken to evacuate people (living) within five kilometres” of the zone, he said.

He did not specify which location was hit, saying only it was in the Krasnogvardeisky district, which lies inland at the centre of the Black Sea peninsula.

Mr Aksyonov also said train traffic would be stopped on the peninsula. “To minimise risks, it was also decided to halt rail traffic on Crimean railways.”

Authorities later said that two trains going from Moscow to Crimea’s main city of Simferopol and one in the opposite direction had been stopped.

A Russian warship sails this week near the Kerch bridge, linking the Russian mainland to Crimea, following the attack claimed by Ukrainian forces. Picture: AFP

Attacks on the Black Sea peninsula have intensified in recent weeks, with Kyiv launching a counteroffensive to retake land lost to Moscow, and saying it also aims to reclaim Crimea.

Speaking remotely to the Aspen Security Forum on Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia’s Crimea bridge must be “neutralised”.

He said the bridge, inaugurated by President Vladimir Putin in 2018, “supplies ammunition to the Crimean peninsula”. Kyiv considers the bridge an “enemy object” built in violation of international law.

Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting on the Crimean bridge attack via a video link at the Kremlin in Moscow this week. Picture: Sputnik/AFP

Asked if Kyiv aims to recover Crimea in its counteroffensive, Mr Zelensky said: “The goal is to return all of Crimea, because it is our sovereign state, and our sovereign territory is an integral part of our state.”

To the north, in Ukraine’s southern mainland, a Russian war correspondent working for the state RIA Novosti news agency, Rostislav Zhuravlev, was killed in a Ukrainian “cluster’’ strike in the southern Zaporizhzhia region on Saturday, the Russian military announced.

“As a result of a strike by the Ukrainian army using cluster munitions, four journalists were wounded in various levels of severity,” the Russian army said in a statement. “During an evacuation, the RIA Novosti journalist Rostislav Zhuravlev died from his wounds that resulted from the cluster munitions exploding.”

In Warsaw, Poland’s foreign ministry on Saturday issued an “urgent” summons to the Russian ambassador to protest at what Warsaw termed “provocative declarations” by Putin.

Putin had on Friday accused Warsaw of harbouring territorial ambitions in western Ukraine, an oft-repeated Russian claim, as well as by Belarus, a close Moscow ally which Putin on Friday promised to protect from possible attack.

Overseeing a national security council meeting, Putin also claimed that Polish western territories were a post-World War II “gift” from former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

Polish deputy foreign minister Pawel Jablonski said the Russian ambassador was summoned following “provocative declarations by Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as (following) threats and other inimical actions by the Russian Federation with regard to Poland and our allies”.

“The meeting was very brief,” he added.

“The frontiers between countries are absolutely untouchable and Poland is opposed to any kind of revision thereof,” Mr Jablonski declared.

Following Putin’s comments, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki late on Friday tweeted that “Stalin was a war criminal responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Poles” during and after World War II.

Mr Jablonski said Putin’s comments were “an attempt to absolve the war criminal that was Stalin by another war criminal which is Putin today”.

The post-war settlement after 1945 saw present-day Poland moved some 300km westwards compared to its pre-conflict borders.

In the US, French President Emmanuel Macron’s diplomatic adviser said China was delivering items to Russia that could be used as military equipment that in turn could be used in its war in Ukraine.

“There are indications that they are doing things we would prefer them not to do,” said Emmanuel Bonne during a rare public address Thursday at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, which is being broadcast.

When asked what he was referring to, he said it was the delivery of “kind of military equipment”.

“As far as we know, they are not delivering massively military capacities to Russia,” he added.

A French diplomatic source told AFP that the adviser referred to the “possible deliveries of dual-use technologies”, both civilian and military.

The West has urged Beijing not to deliver arms to Russia for its war in Ukraine. While they have regularly said there is no evidence to that effect, they are concerned about the possibility of Chinese firms delivering technology that could be used by Russians on the battlefield in Ukraine.

Claiming to be neutral in the conflict, China has called for respect for sovereign states, including Ukraine, but has never publicly condemned the military operation carried out in Ukraine by Putin.