MOSCOW: Russia has said that the United States was responsible for a Ukrainian strike on the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula with five US-supplied missiles that killed at least four people, including two children, and wounded 151 more.
The Russian Ministry for Defense Affairs stated that four of the US-delivered ATACMS missiles, equipped with cluster warheads, were shot down by its air defense systems and the ammunition of a fifth had exploded in mid-air.
Russian-installed administration in Crimea stated missile fragments had fallen just after noon near a beach on the north side of the city of Sevastopol where local people were on holiday. The incident generated a breakneck reaction among Russian public figures.
The Russian Ministry for Defense Affairs said that US specialists had set the missiles’ flight coordinates on the ground of information from US spy satellites, meaning the US was directly responsible for it.
The ministry said, “Responsibility for the deliberate missile strike on the civilians is borne above all by the US, which supplied these arms to Kyiv, and by Ukraine, from whose territory this attack was carried out.”
Moscow had annexed Crimea in 2014 and now considers the Black Sea peninsula it as an integral part of its territory, though most of the countries considers it still part of Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had sent tens of thousands of forces into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, in what he cast as a defensive action against hostile and aggressive Western countries. Kyiv and the West say Moscow is waging an imperial-style war.
Washington began supplying Ukraine with longer range ATACMS missiles, which have a 300-kilometer (186-mile) range, earlier this year but Reuters reported it was unable to verify battlefield news from either side.
