KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A fire at a munitions depot inside Russia forced the evacuation of two villages near the border with Ukraine, an official said Friday, while two civilians were reported wounded by Russian shelling near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as both sides traded accusations about fighting near the facility in southern Ukraine.
The fire late Thursday struck the munitions storage building near the village of Timonovo in Russia’s Belgorod region on Ukraine’s northeastern border. About 1,100 people live in Timonovo and Soloti, about 15 miles (25 kilometers) from the border. No one was hurt, said Belgorod regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov.
The fire came days after another ammunition depot exploded on the Crimean Peninsula, a Russian-occupied territory on the Black Sea that was annexed by Moscow in 2014.
Last week, nine Russian warplanes were reported destroyed at an airbase on Crimea, demonstrating both the Russians’ vulnerability and the Ukrainians’ capacity to strike deep behind enemy lines.
Ukrainian authorities have stopped short of publicly claiming responsibility. But President Volodymyr Zelenskyy alluded to Ukrainian attacks behind enemy lines after the blasts in Crimea, which Russia has blamed on “sabotage.”
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said in televised remarks Friday that statements from Ukrainian officials about striking facilities in Crimea mark “an escalation of the conflict openly encouraged by the United States and its NATO allies.”
Ryabkov said Russian officials had warned the U.S. against such actions in phone calls with high-level members of the Biden administration, adding that “deep and open U.S. involvement” in the war in Ukraine “effectively puts the U.S. on the brink of becoming a party to the conflict.“
In spite of the latest incidents, a Western official said the war is at a “near operational standstill,” with neither side able to launch major offensives.
“The whole tempo of the campaign has slowed down, partly because both sides have become more conscious that this is a marathon not a sprint and that expenditure rates and conserving their munitions is important,” said official said who spoke on condition of anonymity because he’s not authorized to discuss intelligence matters publicly.
Later Friday, a Ukrainian official said two civilians were wounded by Russian shelling of Ukrainian communities neighboring the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, the latest in a long string of such shelling accusations over the past weeks.
“A new enemy attack on the Nikopol district. Five shells fired by Russian cannon artillery flew into the residential areas of Marhanets,” Valentyn Reznichenko, the regional governor, said on Telegram. Both Nikopol and Marhanets are Ukrainian-controlled towns which face the nuclear plant across the Dnieper River.
“According to preliminary…
Read More:Russia, Ukraine spar over fighting near nuclear facility
