Russian residents drafted in the course of the partial mobilization begin their military trainings after a military call-up for the Russia-Ukraine war in Rostov, Russia on October 04, 2022.
Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
Gunmen shot dead 11 people at a Russian military training ground, the defense ministry said, in the newest blow to President Vladimir Putin’s forces because the invasion of Ukraine.
RIA news agency cited the ministry as saying 15 others were wounded within the shooting on Saturday, in Russia’s southwestern Belgorod region that borders Ukraine, when two men gunned down a gaggle who had volunteered to participate within the war.
It said the 2 assailants – nationals from an unspecified former Soviet republic – had been shot dead. Some Russian independent media outlets reported that the variety of casualties was higher than the official figures.
“A terrible event happened on our territory, on the territory of certainly one of the military units,” the governor of Belgorod region Vyacheslav Gladkov said early on Sunday.
“Many soldiers were killed and wounded … There aren’t any residents of the Belgorod region among the many wounded and killed,’ Gladkov said in a video post on the Telegram messaging app.
The attack took place per week after a blast damaged a bridge in Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014. Earlier within the war, Russia’s flagship within the Black Sea blew up and sank.
“During a firearms training session with individuals who voluntarily expressed a desire to take part in the special military operation (against Ukraine), the terrorists opened fire with small arms on the personnel of the unit,” RIA cited a defense ministry statement as saying.
Mobilization
Only a day earlier, Putin said Russia must be finished calling up reservists in two weeks, promising an end to a divisive mobilization that has seen tons of of 1000’s of men summoned to fight in Ukraine and large numbers flee the country.
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said in a YouTube interview that the attackers were from the Central Asian nation of Tajikistan and had opened fire on the others after an argument over religion.
Tajikistan is a predominantly Muslim nation, while around half of Russians follow various branches of Christianity. The Russian ministry had said the attackers were from a nation within the Commonwealth of Independent States, which groups nine ex-Soviet republics, including Tajikistan.
Reuters was not immediately able to substantiate the comments by Arestovych, a distinguished commentator on the war, or independently confirm casualty numbers and other details of the incident.
Elsewhere, Zelenskiy said that Ukrainian troops were still holding the strategic eastern town of Bakhmut despite repeated Russian attacks while the situation within the larger Donbas region remained very difficult.
Russian forces have repeatedly tried to seize Bakhmut, which sits on a principal road resulting in the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. Each are situated within the Donetsk region.
Attacks
Within the 24 hours to Sunday morning, Russian forces targeted greater than 30 towns and villages across Ukraine, launching five missile and 23 air strikes and as much as 60 rocket attacks, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said on Sunday.
In response, Ukraine’s air forces carried out 32 strikes, hitting 24 Russian targets.
Fighting is especially intense within the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, and the strategically necessary Kherson province within the south, three of the 4 provinces Putin proclaimed as a part of Russia last month.
Shelling by Ukrainian forces damaged the administration constructing in the town Donetsk, capital of the Donetsk region, its Russian-backed administration said on Sunday.
Kirill Stremousov, a Russian-installed official within the Kherson region, said on the Telegram messaging app on Sunday that Russian forces had quashed an offensive by Ukrainian troops in the realm and that the situation there was “under control”.
Ukraine’s Southern Command said its forces’ positions had come under repeated attack on Saturday and a small “shooting battle” had taken place near the village of Tryfonivka within the Kherson region.
Russian forces also fired nearly 20 Russian-made Grad rockets on the precise bank of the Dnipro River within the Kherson region, it said.
Russia’s defense ministry said on Saturday its forces had killed greater than 50 Ukrainian soldiers and destroyed five tanks near the Kakhovka Reservoir on the Dnipro River.
Reuters was not in a position to independently confirm the battlefield reports.
Although Ukrainian troops have recaptured 1000’s of square miles of land in recent offensives within the east and south, officials say progress is more likely to slow once Kyiv’s forces meet more determined resistance.
Ukrainian forces and civilians are counting on Starlink web service provided by Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket company. Musk said on Friday he could not afford to fund the service but on Saturday said he would proceed to accomplish that.
Zelenskiy said almost 65,000 Russians had been killed to date because the Feb. 24 invasion, a figure far higher than Moscow’s official Sept. 21 estimate of 5,937 dead. In August the Pentagon said Russia has suffered between 70,000 and 80,000 casualties, either killed or wounded.
Zelenskiy’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak said on Telegram on Sunday that Ukraine would prevail within the war due to the continued military aid it’s receiving from the West and the cumulative impact of Western sanctions on Russia’s economy.
“Ukraine’s offensive is strategic and the defeat of Russia is inevitable,” Yermak said.
