Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – Russia’s top diplomat warned Ukraine against provoking World War III, saying the threat of a nuclear conflict “should not be underestimated” as his country faces attacks on rail and fuel facilities far from the front lines of the New East Moscow unleashed insultingly.
Meanwhile, Britain’s Defense Ministry said on Tuesday that Russian forces had taken the Ukrainian city of Kreminna in the Lukansk region after days of street fighting.
“The city of Kreminna has reportedly fallen and heavy fighting is reported south of Izium, while Russian forces attempt to advance on the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk from the north and east,” the British military said in a tweet. It did not say how it knew the city had fallen, 575 kilometers (355 miles) southeast of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. The Ukrainian government did not immediately comment.
The US has shipped more arms to Ukraine and said support from Western allies is making a difference in the two-month-old war.
“Russia failed. Ukraine is succeeding,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday after he and US Secretary of Defense made a bold visit to Kyiv to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Blinken said Washington has approved a sale of $165 million worth of ammunition — non-US ammunition primarily if not exclusively for Soviet-era weapons in Ukraine — and will also offer more than $300 million Provide funding to purchase additional supplies.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin went further, saying the US wanted Ukraine to remain a sovereign, democratic country, but also “we wanted Russia to be weakened to the point where it couldn’t do things like invade Ukraine.”
Austin’s comments appear to represent a shift in US strategic goals, having previously said the goal of US military aid is to help Ukraine win and defend Ukraine’s NATO neighbors against Russian threats.
In an apparent response to Austin, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia “feels that the West wants Ukraine to keep fighting and, it seems to them, is exhausting and exhausting the Russian army and the Russian military-industrial war complex. It’s an illusion.”
Weapons supplied by Western countries “will be a legitimate target,” Lavrov said, adding that Russian forces are targeting arms caches in western Ukraine.
Lavrov accused Ukrainian leaders of provoking Russia by calling for NATO to interfere in the conflict. NATO “entered war with Russia through proxies and is arming those proxies,” he said. NATO forces are “putting fuel on the fire,” Lavrov said, according to a transcript on the Russian Foreign Ministry website.
“Everyone recites incantations that there is no way we can allow World War III,” he said in a Russian television interview.
Lavrov said he did not want the risks of a nuclear confrontation “to be artificially inflated now, when the risks are quite significant.”
“The danger is great,” he said. “It’s real. Don’t underestimate that.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter that Lavrov’s comments underscore Ukraine’s need for Western aid: “Russia is losing the last hope of stopping the world from supporting Ukraine. Hence the talk of a “real” danger of World War III. It just means that Moscow feels defeat in Ukraine.”
When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, its obvious goal was to capture the capital, Kyiv. But the Ukrainians, with the help of Western weapons, forced President Vladimir Putin’s troops to retreat.
Moscow now says its goal is to take Donbass, the predominantly Russian-speaking industrial region in eastern Ukraine. Both sides say the campaign is underway, but Russia has yet to launch a full-scale ground offensive or make any major breakthroughs.
On Monday, Russia concentrated its firepower elsewhere, with missiles and warplanes falling far behind the front lines in an attempt to thwart Ukraine’s supply efforts.
Five train stations in central and western Ukraine were hit and one worker was killed, said Oleksandr Kamyshin, head of the Ukrainian State Railways. The bombardment included a rocket attack near Lviv, the western city near Poland’s border, which has been swollen by Ukrainians fleeing violence elsewhere.
At least five people were killed in Russian attacks in the central Vynnytsia region, according to Ukrainian authorities.
Russia also destroyed an oil refinery and fuel storage facility in Kremenchuk in central Ukraine, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said. In total, Russian warplanes destroyed 56 Ukrainian targets, he said.
Philip Breedlove, a retired US general who was NATO commander in chief from 2013 to 2016, said the attacks on fuel depots were intended to deplete key Ukrainian war resources. Strikes against rail targets, on the other hand, are a “legitimate” attempt to cut supply lines, he said.
“The illegitimate reason is that they know people are trying to leave the country and this is just another intimidation, a terrorist tactic to make them not have faith and trust in rail travel. “
Phillips P. O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, said the war was evolving into a campaign of increasing losses and gains on the battlefield.
“The two sides weaken each other every day,” he said.
In Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldova next to the Ukrainian border, several explosions suspected to be caused by rocket-propelled grenades hit the territory’s Ministry of State Security. There was no immediate admission of responsibility or reports of injuries. Transnistria is a strip of land with a population of around 470,000. About 1,500 Russian troops are stationed there.
Moldova’s Foreign Ministry said: “The aim of today’s incident is to create pretexts to strain the security situation in the Transnistria region.” The US has said Russia could launch “false flag” attacks against its own side , to create a pretext for invasion by other nations.
Last week, Rustam Minnekayev, a Russian military commander, said the Kremlin wants full control of southern Ukraine to open the way to Transnistria.
An estimated 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers holed up at a steel plant in the strategic southern port city of Mariupol are tying down Russian forces and apparently preventing them from joining the offensive elsewhere in Donbass. Over the weekend, Russian forces launched fresh airstrikes on the Azovstal plant to try to clear the remains.
About 1,000 civilians are also said to have sought shelter in the steelworks.
The Mariupol City Council and Mayor said a new mass grave had been discovered about 10 kilometers north of the city. Mayor Vadym Boychenko said authorities are trying to estimate the number of victims. It was at least the third new mass grave discovered in Russian-controlled areas near Mariupol in the past week.
Mariupol has been hit by bombing and fierce street fighting for the past two months. Russia’s capture of the city would deprive Ukraine of a vital port and give Moscow a land corridor to the Crimea peninsula, which it expropriated from Ukraine in 2014.
In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy said Ukraine maintained its resistance to “make the stay of the occupiers in our country even more unbearable” while Russia exhausted its resources.
Britain said it believes 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine since the Russian invasion began. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said 25% of Russian combat units deployed to Ukraine were “ineffective”.
Ukrainian officials said about 2,500 to 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed by mid-April.
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Gambrell reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Associated Press journalist Yuras Karmanau in Lviv and AP collaborators around the world contributed to this report.
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