LIVE. “Ukrainian drone attack causes explosion in ammunition depot in Crimea”, car and train traffic temporarily halted | News

The Russian ambassador to Poland was summoned on Saturday over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threatening language towards Warsaw.

Putin on Friday accused Poland of “aggression” against Russia and Belarus because the country decided to send troops to the Belarusian border. Poland thus responds to the presence of Russian Wagner mercenaries on the territory of the Russian ally Belarus.

The Russian president declared that he would “reply with all the means at our disposal”. Polish Deputy Prime Minister Pawel Jablonski speaks of “provocative remarks, threats and other hostile actions by the Russian Federation against Poland and our allies”.

A Russian journalist from the Ria Novosti news agency, Rostislav Jouravlev, was killed on Saturday in Ukrainian bombings in the Zaporizhia region of southern Ukraine. This has been announced by the Russian army.

According to the Russian army, Ukrainian forces carried out an artillery strike against a group of journalists. According to Russia, four journalists were “more or less seriously injured”. “During the evacuation, Rostislav Jouravlev (…) died of his wounds”.

The condition of the three other journalists is said to be “stable” and, according to the Russian military, they were “quickly evacuated to medical facilities” of the Russian Defense Ministry.

According to the Russian news agency Ria Novosti, the bombing took place near the village of Pyatikhatky in the southern region of Zaporisha.

A Ukrainian drone strike caused an explosion at an ammunition depot in Crimea on Saturday, the governor of the peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014 said. He ordered the evacuation of the population in a radius of five kilometers and a suspension of rail traffic.

“As a result of an enemy drone attack in the Krasnogvardeysky district, there was an explosion in an ammunition depot,” Sergei Aksionov told Telegram. “It has been decided to evacuate people living within a radius of five kilometers. To minimize the risks, it has also been decided to stop train traffic,” he added.

Meanwhile, the pro-Russian authorities in Crimea have announced that car traffic has been “temporarily” stopped. Train traffic has also been halted, the Russian news agency Tass reports.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky considers the Crimean Bridge, which runs from Russia to Crimea, a military target. He states that the controversial compound “brings not peace but war”.

The bridge is important for supplying the Russian army in Ukraine. According to the Russian news agency Tass, car traffic on the bridge has now fully recovered after the explosions on Monday.

“The route is used daily to feed the war with munitions. This militarizes the Crimean peninsula,” Zelensky said via video link on the Aspen Security Forum in the United States. The bridge has been in use since 2018. Its construction began in 2015, a year after Russia annexed Crimea and then fighting broke out in eastern Ukraine.

Fatal explosions took place on Monday at the Crimean Bridge, which is more than 18 kilometers long. Part of the bridge had to be temporarily closed due to the damage. Russia designates Ukraine as responsible. Ukrainian officials have welcomed but not claimed the incident. Ukraine hopes to retake Crimea in the war that Russia started in February last year.

At least killed four peoplereports the Ukrainian Public Prosecutor’s Office.

According to the OM Fab-250 bombs dropped on the village of Nju-Jork in the Donbass region. Three civilians were taken to hospital with injuries. It is feared that the number casualties will rise. The Public Prosecution Service has launched an investigation into war crimes.

In addition, the authorities of the region Dnipropetrovsk reporting of three victims by Russian artillery fire in Nikopol. The city is located on the bank of the Dnipro River across from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant.

The US intelligence agency Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has “no reason to doubt” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claim that a first shipment of nuclear weapons has been sent to Belarus. Senior officials of the DIA said this on Friday, the American news site ‘CNN’ reports.

Putin said last month at an economic forum in St. Petersburg that “the first nuclear warheads had been delivered to the territory of Belarus,” adding that they were placed there for “deterrence.” According to the Federation of American Scientists, Russia has more than 4,477 warheads, including about 1,900 tactical nuclear weapons, CNN continues.

It is not clear how much of this arsenal Putin intends to move, according to CNN, and US and Western agencies have not publicly confirmed that any Russian weapons have been transferred to Belarus. But senior DIA officials told Friday that analysts had “no reason” to doubt Putin’s claims. They also had no reason to doubt that they had succeeded in handing over the weapons.

Officials declined to say why that was the case. They acknowledged that the weapons are difficult for US intelligence to track, even with satellite imagery, according to CNN. US officials told the US news site earlier this month that it did not appear that Belarus had finished upgrading its necessary storage facilities to house tactical nuclear weapons.

The South African government would arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin if he entered the country. This is stated in an affidavit from the South African Ministry of Justice, which was published on Friday by the opposition Democratic Alliance party.

After months of uncertainty, South Africa and Russia announced earlier this week that Putin would not travel to South Africa for the Brics summit, which will take place in Johannesburg from August 22-24. However, Putin would participate via videoconference in the meeting of the group, which, in addition to Russia and South Africa, also consists of Brazil, India and China.

Putin’s virtual participation avoided a difficult dilemma for South Africa. After all, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against Putin, and as a member of the ICC, South Africa is theoretically obliged to arrest Putin as soon as he enters the territory.

However, South Africa maintains its neutral position and has never condemned Russia for the invasion of Ukraine. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has also remained vague in recent months about whether his country would actually arrest Putin if he entered the country.

The Democratic Alliance, together with human rights organization Amnesty International, then filed a lawsuit with the Pretoria High Court to force the government to arrest Putin in such a case. The regional director of Amnesty International South Africa, meanwhile, called the ministry’s statement a “victory for the rule of law and international justice, but especially for the victims in Ukraine”.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has spoken with his Turkish counterpart and mediator, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, about relaunching the international grain deal after Russia pulled out of the deal earlier this week.

“Reopening the grain corridor is an absolute priority,” Zelensky said in Kiev on Friday evening, after a phone call with his Turkish counterpart. “Together we must prevent a global food crisis,” he said.

Russia’s withdrawal from the deal on Monday has triggered a new maritime blockade, partly because Moscow no longer wants to offer security guarantees for grain ships passing through parts of the Black Sea under Russian control.

“Because of Russia, the world is once again on the brink of a food crisis. In total, some 400 million people in many African and Asian countries are threatened with famine,” said Zelensky.

The grain deal, which was brokered a year ago by Turkey and the United Nations, made it possible to export grain from Ukraine via the Black Sea despite the war. Grain sales provided Ukraine – one of the world’s largest producers – with important revenues, but were also crucial for ensuring the global food supply.

“The Wagner mercenary army is not currently fighting in Ukraine.” So says Jake Sullivan, White House national security adviser. Sullivan thus confirms on Friday a video message to the same effect that the head of Wagner Yevgeny Prigozhin sent into the world on Wednesday.

“What is happening at the front now is a disgrace in which we do not have to participate,” Prigozhin said in a video posted to Telegram. It is not entirely certain whether the man in the video was actually Prigozhin, but the voice certainly sounded like his.

Prigozhin, who is bivouacing with his men in Belarus, instructed his soldiers to join forces and prepare for battle in Africa. Wagner mercenaries have been active there for years.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has spoken threateningly against Poland following Warsaw’s decision to send troops to its eastern border with Belarus, Moscow’s ally in the war with Ukraine.

“Belarus is part of the Union state (of Russia and Belarus). And launching aggression against Belarus would be tantamount to aggression against the Russian Federation. We will answer that with all the means at our disposal,” Putin said at a meeting of the National Security Council on Friday.

Poland, a NATO member state, announced earlier today that it planned to deploy an as yet unknown number of soldiers further east. Warsaw thus responds to the presence of Wagner mercenaries in neighboring Belarus.

Putin previously accused Poland – without any evidence – of planning to occupy areas in western Ukraine. Propaganda in Russia often claims without any basis that Poland, a close ally of Ukraine, has plans to expand its territory.

Now Putin argued that Poland should not forget that gaining German territories in the west after World War II was a “gift from Stalin”. That statement is not historically accurate. After WWII, the Allies and the Soviet Union decided on the division of the map of Europe. Poland gained territory in the west that had been part of Germany for hundreds of years, but the Soviet Union took over parts of Poland in the east that had long been Polish territory.