Ukrainian drone attack hits Crimea ammunition depot, says pro-Moscow official

An ammunition depot was struck during a Ukrainian drone attack on Dzhankoi in Crimea early on Monday, with Russian air defence forces intercepting or suppressing 11 drones over the area, a Russian-installed official has said.

Reuters reports that Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-installed governor of the Crimean peninsula, also said a residential building was damaged in the area.

It was not immediately clear whether the ammunition depot was directly hit by a drone or if it was damaged by falling drone debris.

Russia has a military airbase near Dzhankoi. Ukrainian officials have long said the city and surrounding areas have been turned into Moscow’s largest military base in Crimea.

Aksyonov also said on Telegram that “for safety reasons” railway and road traffic in the area was suspended.

In the Observer, Simon Tisdall writes on Russian president Vladimir Putin’s declining international acceptability.

As his spectral bogeyman image grew, so Putin’s international acceptability shrank. Since February last year, only Iran, Belarus and some former Soviet republics (plus adoring Dagestan) have been honoured by his presence. He briefly travelled to occupied Ukraine in April – but that was strictly not by invitation.

Russian arrest of pro-war blogger likely to trigger fury in military, says UK MoD

Russia’s arrest of Igor Girkin, a former Russian intelligence officer and leading nationalist military blogger, will probably infuriate elements in the military as well as his fellow bloggers, according to UK intelligence.

The Ministry of Defence said in its latest intelligence update that Girkin had long been a critic of the Russian defence ministry’s conduct of the war in Ukraine, but that in recent days his comments “turned to direct criticism of Russian president Vladimir Putin and his time in power”.

The former former battlefield commander of Russia’s proxy forces in eastern Ukraine, who was convicted by a Dutch court over the 2014 shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, was arrested on “extremism” charges on Friday.

Igor Girkin behind a glass wall in a Moscow court on Friday. Photograph: Yulia Morozova/Reuters

The UK ministry said in its update, posted on Twitter, that Girkin’s arrest “is likely to infuriate fellow members of the mil-blogger community – and elements within the serving military – who largely see Girkin as an astute military analyst and patriot”.

Girkin had played a major role in Russia’s war in the Donbas from 2014 and spent months on the frontline last year, it said.

While Girkin is no ally of the Wagner Group, he was likely only prepared to push the limits of public criticism in the context of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s June 2023 abortive mutiny. The taboo against unmasked criticism of the Putin regime has significantly weakened.

Ukraine has begun using cluster bombs on Russian defences, US says

Ukrainian forces have begun using US-supplied cluster bombs – which are banned by more than 120 countries – in the ‘“last week or so” and they are “having an impact” on Russian defences, a White House spokesperson has said.

“They’re using them appropriately, they’re using them effectively and they are actually having an impact on Russia’s defensive formations and Russia’s defensive manoeuvring,” White House national security council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters.

The munitions arrived in Ukraine last week and are seen by the US as a way to get Kyiv critically needed ammunition to help bolster its offensive and push through Russian frontlines.

Ukraine has pledged to only use the controversial bombs to dislodge concentrations of Russian enemy soldiers.

The deployment of the munitions comes as Kyiv reports a new attempt by Russia to return to the offensive in the north-east of Ukraine, where it says Moscow has massed 100,000 troops and hundreds of tanks.

Deaths reported after Russian strike on Mykolaiv, military says

Deaths have been reported in Mykolaiv after Russia launched strikes on the southern port city, the Ukrainian military and the local governor have said.

The city centre was hit in the attack and a garage and three-storey residential building were set on fire, governor Vitaliy Kim said on Telegram. Nine people were wounded, including five children, Kim said, later adding “there are also dead”.

Two people were also hospitalised after strikes on Odesa, the military said. The Black Sea port has already endured two nights of Russian bombardment after Moscow said it was pulling out a deal that allowed Ukrainian grain to be exported via Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.

Earlier the military had warned that both cities were being targeted by Kh-22 anti-ship missiles.

Road traffic partially reopens on Crimean bridge struck by explosion

Partial road traffic opened on one lane of the Crimean Bridge late on Monday, Russian deputy prime minister Marat Khusnullin said on his Telegram channel, almost 24 hours after it was struck by two explosions.

“Motor transport on the Crimean Bridge has been restored in reverse mode on the most outer right lane,” Khusnullin wrote on Monday according to Reuters.

Damage to the Crimea Bridge after Monday’s attack. Photograph: Reuters

However, ferry operations were suspended early on Tuesday, due to bad weather, Russian agencies reported, citing the Moscow-backed emergency situations ministry of Crimea.

Early on Monday two explosions damaged the bridge, also known as the Kerch Bridge or Kerch Strait Bridge, connecting Crimea to mainland Russia, killing two people and closing the main conduit for Russian road traffic to the occupied peninsula.

Moscow called it a “terrorist” strike by Ukrainian sea drones though Kyiv has not claimed responsibility for the attack.

Putin says Russia preparing response to Crimea bridge attack

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said on Monday his defence ministry was preparing proposals for a response to the overnight attack that damaged the road bridge linking Crimea to southern Russia, for which he blamed Ukraine.

At the end of a televised meeting with national and regional officials to assess the consequences of the attack, Putin called it a cruel and senseless act, as he said the bridge had not been used for months to supply Russian forces fighting in Ukraine, Reuters reports.

Ukraine did not officially claim responsibility, but local media said its security services had deployed maritime drones.

Russia shoots down nine Ukrainian drones over Crimea, Moscow official says

Russia’s air defence forces and fleet in the Black Sea intercepted nine Ukrainian drones over the Crimean port of Sevastopol early on Sunday, a Moscow-installed official said.

“No objects, either in the city or in the water area were damaged,” said Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Moscow-installed governor of Sevastopol.

Two aerial drones were shot down over the sea, five were intercepted by Russia’s electronic warfare forces and two water surface drones were destroyed on the outer shore, Razvozhayev added.

The strikes were over the harbour of Sevastopol and the city’s Balaklava and Khersones districts.

Maritime transport, including passenger ferries, was suspended for several hours early on Sunday, authorities said.

There was no immediate comment from Ukraine on the attack on the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

A view of the yacht marina at the city of Balaklava in Sevastopol, Crimea. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Kremlin says it has thwarted Kyiv-backed plot to kill prominent journalists

Russia’s FSB security service said on Saturday it had thwarted alleged Ukrainian-backed plots to kill two prominent Russian journalists, Interfax news agency reported.

The FSB said it had detained an unspecified number of people on Friday who it said had carried out reconnaissance near the homes and workplaces of Margarita Simonyan and Ksenia Sobchak, Reuters reports.

There was no immediate comment from Ukraine, which in the past has denied involvement in assassinations of pro-war figures inside Russia.

Interfax quoted the FSB as saying that the detainees had admitted preparing attacks on the two women on behalf of Ukraine and had been promised a reward of 1.5 million roubles ($16,620) for each one.

Simonyan, head of state media outlet RT and a vocal supporter of Russia’s war in Ukraine, posted a message on Telegram about the alleged plot, urging the security services to “Keep on working, brothers!”

Sobchak is a well known journalist and TV host who also ran as a presidential candidate in 2018.

Kyiv accepts counteroffensive is not advancing quickly

Ukraine acknowledged on Friday its troops were advancing “not so quickly” in a counteroffensive to recapture territory in the east and south of the country from Russian forces.

The head of the Ukrainian president’s office, Andriy Yermak, told reporters that the battles were difficult but said western allies were not putting pressure on Kyiv to advance faster, AFP reports.

Today it’s advancing not so quickly. If we are going to see that something is going wrong, we’ll say so. No one is going to embellish.

There is no pressure, just a question: how can we help you further?

It’s clear that our successes on the battlefield influence everything that is happening.

At a meeting with Ukrainian armed forces leadership on Friday, “the president informed the military that this is important”, Yermak said.

Kyiv would not negotiate with Russia until it withdrew its troops from Ukraine, he added.

“Even thinking about these talks is only possible after Russian troops leave our territory,” he said.