Ukraine said on Monday it had attacked a base belonging to the Wagner paramilitary group, whose men are accused of fighting alongside Russian troops, and destroyed a bridge near the occupied town of Melitopol.
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According to the governor of the Lugansk region in eastern Ukraine, the base of this private military company in the city of Propasna was “destroyed by a precision strike.” The shooting took place on Sunday, Serguiï Gaïdaï said on Telegram.
The very opaque Wagner group is said to be linked to the Russian oligarch Evguéni Prigojine, who is close to Vladimir Putin himself as President. The presence of their fighters has been confirmed in Syria, Libya, Mali and other African countries in recent years.
Ukrainian authorities also claimed that pro-Kyiv saboteurs managed to blow up a railway bridge near the Russian army-held town of Melitopol (Zaporizhia region, south) in order to disrupt the logistics of troops from Moscow.
“One less railway bridge southwest of Melitopol means a total lack of military trains from Crimea,” a peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014 and vital to supplying the Russian army, Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov announced on Telegram.
Ukraine has attacked several bridges in recent weeks, mostly in the occupied Kherson region, where Kyiv says it is leading a counteroffensive that has recaptured dozens of villages and is now threatening Russian troops crossing the Dnieper.
In the Odessa region on the Black Sea, three summer guests were killed and two others injured while bathing on a beach in Zatoka, a popular seaside resort, by the detonation of an “unknown explosive device” on Monday, Telegram a spokesman for the regional authorities, Serguiï Bratchouk, said.
In the morning, Russian bombing raids on Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, left at least one dead and six injured, a senior local police official, Serguiï Bolvinov, said on Facebook.