Ukraine denies attacking Russian fleet in Crimea
Ukraine on Sunday denied a drone attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Crimea, in which six people were injured, Moscow said, calling the Russian allegations a “premeditated provocation”.
Russian allegations of a “so-called Ukrainian attack on the headquarters of the Russian fleet in Sevastopol” are “a deliberate provocation,” Odessa regional administration spokesman Sergii Brachuk said in an explanatory video on Telegram. “The liberation of Ukrainian-occupied Crimea will be done in a different, much more efficient way,” he added.
A summer in Cyprus without Russian tourists
In Ayia Napa, a popular seaside resort in Cyprus, the partying resumed but without the influx of Russian tourists, once the second largest contingent of visitors after the British, a void difficult to fill. “This year we expected 800,000 Russian tourists” (like in 2019), Haris Loizides, head of the Cyprus Hotel Association, told AFP. A threshold that can no longer be reached, because according to official statistics, only 17,000 Russian tourists came to the Mediterranean island in the first six months of the year.
The Russian market was “wiped out overnight” following EU sanctions after Moscow invaded Ukraine, says Christos Angelidis, president of the Pancyprian Association of Hotel Managers.
Nicosia and Moscow have close political and cultural ties, but when Russia sent troops to Ukraine, the Cypriot parliament unanimously passed a resolution condemning the invasion.
Celebrations in Crimea canceled
All celebrations related to the Day of the Russian Fleet “have been canceled for security reasons,” Sevastopol Governor M. Razvojayev said after the drone strike. Extensive celebrations are planned across Russia to mark the holiday, including a naval parade in Saint Petersburg (northwest) led by President Vladimir Putin.
Drone attack on Russian Black Sea Fleet personnel in Crimea, five wounded
A drone strike on Sunday targeted the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, wounding five, said the governor of that city on the annexed Crimea peninsula, Mikhail Razvojayev. “This morning Ukrainian nationalists decided to spoil for us the Russian Fleet Day”, which will be celebrated in Russia this Sunday, Mr. Razvojayev wrote on Telegram. He specified that a drone landed in the fleet staff yard and reported five injured among staff members.
Zelensky calls for the evacuation of the Donetsk region
In a video speech on Saturday evening, the Ukrainian President called on the population to evacuate the Donetsk region in the east of the country, whose cities are the target of bomb attacks by Russian armed forces. “A government decision has been made on mandatory evacuation of Donetsk region (…) Please evacuate,” he added. “At this stage of the war, terror is Russia’s main weapon. »
France condemns the treatment of Ukrainian prisoners
“France expresses its horror at the reports of assassinations and torture against Ukrainian prisoners of war in the detention center of Olenivka (Ukrainian town in Donbass, editor’s note), which is under the protection of the Russian Federation,” said the Quai d’Orsay said in a statement on Saturday. It would be the prison where the fighters of the Azov regiment, the defenders of Mariupol, are being held.