Ukraine says it has hit a base used by the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, as well as a bridge near the occupied city of Melitopol.
Serhiy Haidai, the governor of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, said the base was “destroyed by a precision strike” after his whereabouts were established “thanks to a Russian journalist”.
Ukrainian news website Ukrainska Pravda reported that a Kremlin military correspondent had visited the mercenaries’ headquarters on August 8 and posted a photograph on Telegram showing a nearby address.
The paramilitary group has been linked by Western intelligence agencies to Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is a close associate of Vladimir Putin. Prigozhin was reported to have been at the base days before the Ukrainian strike.
The presence of Wagner’s paramilitaries has been documented in Libya, Mali and Syria, among many other countries, especially in Africa.
Ukrainian authorities said the saboteurs had blown up a railway bridge southwest of the city of Melitopol, which is controlled by Russian troops. Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fyodorov told Telegram that the strike meant there would be “a total absence of Crimean military trains”.
The Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, is an essential base for supplying Russian troops deployed in southern Ukraine. Ukraine has said it is waging a counteroffensive in the country’s south, retaking dozens of villages and threatening to push Russian troops to the other side of the Dnieper River.
Meanwhile, in Odesa, on the Black Sea, three people died while swimming after “an unidentified explosive device” detonated, said Sergiy Brachuk, a spokesman for local authorities.
Authorities have warned hikers not to enter the sea due to the presence of unexploded mines.
Earlier Monday, Russian shelling of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, killed at least one person and wounded six others, senior police official Sergiy Bolvinov said on Facebook.