A bombardment by the Russian Army with Grad rockets against the city in Marganets and the nearby town of Mirovoe, in the Ukrainian region of Dnepropetrovsk, a few kilometers east of Nikopol, has caused at least 13 deaths and a dozen injuries. This has been assured by the head of the regional Administration, Valentin Reznichenko.
Most of the victims occurred in Márganets, a town that is right in front of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, located on the other side of the river Dnieper and scene in recent days of all kinds of incidents and attacks.
Reznichenko maintains that more than 20 high-rise buildings used as housing, a social assistance center, a palace of culture, a hostel, two schools, the building of the City hall and other constructions of an administrative nature.
According to his words, the Russian Army fired a total of 80 rockets, some of which also affected a gas pipeline, leaving about a thousand people without gas«. The Russian Defense Ministry, for now, has not commented on this. The advisor to the Ukrainian Presidency, Andriy Yermak, believes that the rockets launched against Márganets were fired from the Zaporizhia nuclear plant, currently occupied by Russian troops and the subject of mutual accusations between Moscow and kyiv for the recent attacks.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) assured today in a statement that it had received a report from the Ukrainian authorities in relation to the bombing last Saturday against the atomic power plant, which caused “some damage”, although without causing a radioactive leak.
According to the Ukrainian operator Energoatom, Russia is preparing to shut down the Zaporizhia plant of Ukraine’s electricity system to link it with Crimea. This was made known before the television cameras by the president of the company, Petro Kotin. To achieve this, Kotin pointed out, “first you have to cut the power lines of the plant connected to the Ukrainian energy system. »Between August 7 and 9, the Russians already cut three power lines, so the plant works with only one line (…) something extremely dangerous«, he added.
Zelensky: The war started in Crimea and must end in a liberated Crimea
But for the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, it does not make much sense to divert the electricity generated at the Zaporizhia plant to Crimea, since, according to his opinion, the peninsula will once again belong to Ukraine. in the future still undetermined, but not too far away. In his speech on Tuesday afternoon, Zelensky stated that “this Russian war against Ukraine and against all of free Europe began with Crimea and must end with the liberation of Crimea.”
The Ukrainian president believes that Russia “has turned Crimea into one of the most dangerous places in Europe.” In his words, since the peninsula was annexed by Russia, in March 2014, Moscow “has brought large-scale repression, environmental problems, economic despair and war. Perhaps one day historians will determine how many people have died as a result of Russia’s use of Crimea for terror (…) as long as it remains occupied by Russia, there will be no security in the Black Sea region,” he stressed.
Moscow insists that the Crimean attack was due to a random detonation, but doubts persist
On Tuesday, a series of explosions destroyed the Saki airfield in Crimea, used according to the kyiv Army as a platform for raids against ukrainian soil, and rendered many of the Russian Su-33, Su-30 and Su-24 fighter jets stationed there unusable. Officially, there has been one death and a dozen wounded. Moscow insists that it was an accident caused by the accidental detonation of ammunition. In kyiv they do not recognize the authorship of any attack against the Russian air base in Crimea, but analysts suggest that it would be precisely a Ukrainian war action with a high number of casualties among the Russian military.
The truth is that the explosions were of great intensity and they occurred at several points simultaneously, which would rule out the hypothesis of an accident. A nearby beach was deserted of bathers after hearing the deflagrations and seeing the huge columns of smoke that formed. many vacationers they rushed to escape from the peninsula over the Kerch bridge, causing huge traffic jams.
If it really is an attack, it would be the first major one launched against Crimea since the beginning of the current war on February 24. But the fact that the closest point from which the Ukrainian troops were supposed to have been able to fire is 200 kilometers and the lack, for now, of weapons capable of reaching that distance, casts doubt on the nature of what happened yesterday at the Saki airfield.
www.abc.es
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism