In the latest blow to President Vladimir Putin’s forces since the invasion of Ukraine, gunmen shot dead 11 people at a Russian military training ground on Saturday, the Defense Ministry said.
RIA news agency cited the ministry as saying that 15 other people were wounded in a shooting incident on Saturday in the southwestern Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, when two men joined forces. shot a group that volunteered to take.
It said two of the attackers – a national of an unspecified former Soviet republic – were shot dead. Some independent Russian media reported that the death toll was higher than official figures.
The attack came a week after an explosion damaged a bridge in Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014. Earlier, during the war, the Russian flagship exploded and sank in the Black Sea.
“During a firearms training session with individuals who volunteered to take part in a special military operation (against Ukraine), terror The militants opened fire on the unit personnel with small arms.”
Just a day earlier, Putin said Russia must stop calling up reservists within two weeks, pledging to end a divisive movement that has seen hundreds of thousands of men drafted to fight in Ukraine. and have fled the country in large numbers.
Oleksiy Aristovich, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, said in an interview on YouTube that the attackers were from the Central Asian country of Tajikistan and had opened fire on others after a dispute over religion.
Tajikistan is a Muslim-majority country, while about half of Russians follow various branches of Christianity. The Russian ministry said the attackers were from the Commonwealth of Independent States, a group of nine former Soviet republics including Tajikistan.
JEE News was not immediately able to confirm the comments of Aristovitch, a prominent war observer, or independently verify the death toll and other details of the incident.
The independent Russian news website Sotavision said the attack took place in the small town of Soluti, near the border with Ukraine and about 105 kilometers (65 miles) southeast of Belgorod.
Zelensky said on Saturday that Ukrainian troops are holding the strategic eastern town of Bakhmut despite repeated Russian attacks, while the situation in the greater Donbass region remains difficult.
Although Ukrainian troops have recaptured thousands of square kilometers (miles) of land in recent operations in the east and south, officials say progress will slow once Kyiv’s forces face more determined resistance. .
Ukrainian forces and civilians rely on StarLink Internet service provided by Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket company. Musk said on Friday that he could no longer afford to fund the service, but said on Saturday that he would continue to do so.
About 65,000 Russians have been killed since the Feb. 24 attack, far higher than Moscow’s official Sept. 21 estimate of 5,937 casualties, Zelinsky said. In August, the Pentagon said Russia suffered between 70,000 and 80,000 casualties, either killed or wounded.
Putin ordered the mobilization three weeks ago, part of a response to the Russian battlefield defeat in Ukraine. It has also announced the annexation of four partially occupied Ukrainian provinces and threatened to use nuclear weapons.
Zelensky also said in the evening address that Russian missiles and drones have been targeting Ukrainian cities, causing destruction and loss of life.
Kyiv said on Friday that it expects the United States and Germany to deliver advanced anti-aircraft systems this month to help defend against the missiles.
Fighting is particularly intense in eastern Donetsk and Luhansk provinces bordering Russia. Together they form the large industrialized Donbass, which Moscow has not yet fully captured.
Russian forces have repeatedly tried to capture Bakhmut, which is located on a main road leading to the cities of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk. Both are located in the Donetsk region.
Also, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in a Facebook post that troops repelled a total of 11 separate Russian attacks on Saturday near Kramatorsk, Bakhmut and Avdiivka, a town just north of Donetsk.
