Heading towards World War III?

Russia's Crimean Bridge, the largest structure of its kind in Europe, “should be destroyed,” an aide to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has warned.

“It’s an illegal construction and the main gateway to supply the Russian army in Crimea,” Mikhail Podolyak told the Guardian on Tuesday, explaining why Kiev wants to attack it.

The bridge was constructed after Crimea broke away from Ukraine following an armed coup in Kiev in 2014 and voted in a referendum to join Russia. It forms a direct road and rail connection with the region, which previously could only be reached from the rest of Russia by sea or air. The bridge is predominantly used by civilian traffic.

Podolyak is the latest Ukrainian official to confirm Kiev’s intention to attack the structure. The remark came as he appeared to hint that Ukraine was in the process of delivering a series of acts of sabotage in Crimea.

Since last week, two separate locations on the peninsula have been rocked by powerful explosions at military sites used to store ammunition. The Russian defense ministry acknowledged the latest, which happened on Tuesday near the village of Mayskoye in northern Crimea, as an act of sabotage.

Kiev has not formally claimed credit for the incidents, but many Ukrainian officials hinted that this was the case, with Podolyak following the pattern in his interview with the British newspaper.

“I certainly agree with the Russian ministry for defense, which is predicting more incidents of this kind in the next two, three months. I think we might see more of those happening,” he noted.

The Ukrainian presidential aide called the purported clandestine attacks a “counteroffensive” different in nature from the type of military action usually described by this term.

“A Ukrainian counteroffensive looks very different [from a Russian one]. We don’t use the tactics of the 60s and 70s, of the last century,” he claimed. The Guardian suggested that Podolyak may have tacitly admitted Ukraine’s failure to amass troops and weapons for an actual pushback against Russian troops on the battlefield.

Top Ukrainian officials have for weeks promised a push to recapture the city of Kherson would begin soon, with some even claiming the operation was already underway.

Podolyak told the BBC last week that “all public statements” by Ukrainian officials were “psychological warfare” aimed at demoralizing the Russian army.

www.rt.com/russia/560994-ukraine-destruction-crimean-bridge

Ukraine’s pledge not to attack Russian territory with Western-provided weapons does not cover Crimea, Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov said on Tuesday.

Western nations have claimed that their supplies of advanced weapons to Ukraine were conditional on their non-use against targets in Russia, but officials in Kiev have long suggested that Crimea does not fall under that rule, as it considers the peninsula to be its own territory.

In an interview with US government-funded broadcaster Voice of America, Reznikov said the US has not objected to strikes on the territory, which Russia views as its own.

“We have an agreement with the US that we will not use weapons provided by the US and partners against the territory of the Russian Federation. But if we discuss de-occupying… Ukrainian land where the enemy is now, there are no such restrictions,” he said, after being asked about possible attacks against Crimea.

The minister stated that the limiting factor in such strikes would be the range of the weapons it receives from foreign allies. In the same interview, he expressed hope that Ukraine would soon receive MGM-140 ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles.

The Lockheed Martin-made projectiles can be fired by the M142 HIMARS and the M270 MLRS rocket systems, which Ukraine already has, and have a range of up to 300 km, significantly further than the types of ammunition provided by the US so far.

Crimea broke away from Ukraine after the 2014 armed coup in Kiev, which ousted the democratically elected government. Crimeans overwhelmingly voted in a referendum to join Russia, which accepted the bid and enshrined the peninsula’s new status in its constitution.

The move was not recognized by Kiev, which has said it will only seek a peaceful resolution to the crisis after defeating Russia militarily and ousting it from all captured territories, including Crimea.

The administration of US President Joe Biden has said it imposed restrictions on Ukraine, to avoid being directly dragged into a conflict with Russia. Some officials in both the US and Russia have asserted that the conflict in Ukraine is a NATO war with Russia by a proxy. Washington has said its goal in Ukraine is to achieve a strategic defeat of Moscow.

www.rt.com/russia/561015-ukraine-crimes-strikes-permission

A week after an apparent Ukrainian attack on a Russian military base in occupied Crimea, an arms store at another military facility has been hit by a series of explosions.

Blaming "sabotage", Russian officials said a fire triggered the blasts in the Dzhankoi area, another fire hit a power station and a railway was damaged.

A string of blasts last week destroyed Russian warplanes at a Black Sea base on the Crimean coast.

Ukraine has not admitted that attack.

However, presidential office adviser Mykhailo Podolyak has described the latest incident as "demilitarisation in action", indicating that the explosions were not accidental.

Crimea was seized from Ukraine and then annexed by Russia in early 2014.

Russia gave no indication of the kind of sabotage involved in Tuesday's attack.

The FSB security service said Ukrainian saboteurs had also blown up six electricity pylons this month inside Russia itself.

The attacks in the Kurchatov area, about 100km (60 miles) from Ukraine's north-east border, had affected the "technological process of functioning" of the Kursk nuclear plant, it added.

However, Rosenergoatom, the operator of the plant, has disputed the FSB account and attributed the lowered output "to a fault at a sub-station outside the territory of the nuclear power plant".

Russia's defence ministry said Tuesday's explosions in northern Crimea took place at a temporary ammunition storage site on a base near the village of Maiske at about 06:15 Moscow time (03:15 GMT). A Crimean Tatar leader, Refat Chubarov, called the explosions a "hit" that could be heard "far across the steppe".

The defence ministry in Moscow said there had been no "serious" casualties, but Russian-appointed regional head Sergei Aksyonov visited the site and said 2,000 people had been moved from a nearby village and two people had been wounded.

"One man has a shrapnel wound and one was crushed by a wall. Their lives are not in danger, fortunately," he said.

www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62560041

Dozens of foreign mercenaries, fighting for Kiev against Moscow, have been killed in an attack on a compound in the city of Kharkov in northeastern Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Thursday.

“A temporary base of foreign mercenaries in the city of Kharkov was hit with a ground-based high-precision weapon. More than 90 militants were killed,” ministry’s spokesman Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov announced during his daily briefing.

The Russian Air Force also struck Ukrainian manpower and military hardware in Kherson and Nikolaev Regions, eliminating 80 combatants and injuring 50 others, he added.

Compounds, hosting foreign mercenaries in Ukraine, have already been targeted by Russia several times this month, leading to multiple casualties.

Thousands of fighters from Poland, Canada, the US, the UK and other countries responded to a call by President Vladimir Zelensky and flocked to Ukraine. In April, the Russian military estimated their numbers at nearly 7,000. However, last month it said that only 2,741 foreign fighters remained in Ukraine.

Many of them were killed, while others fled to their home countries and later complained about chaos in the ranks of the Kiev forces, and a lack of arms and other equipment.

Konashenkov had earlier warned that mercenaries aren’t viewed as combatants under international law and “the best thing that awaits them if they are captured alive is a trial and maximum prison terms.”

www.rt.com/news/561074-ukraine-foreign-fighters-kharkov

Ukraine plans to carry out artillery strikes on the Russia-controlled Zaporozhye nuclear power plant on Friday, and then accuse Russia of causing a disaster at the site, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Thursday.

The predicted attack will be timed to coincide with the ongoing visit to Ukraine by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, the ministry claimed.

The Russian ministry said it has detected movements of Ukrainian troops, indicating a looming “provocation.”

Kiev has deployed units trained in responding to the use of weapons of mass destruction, pre-positioning them to report a radiation leak and demonstrate a purported action to mitigate it, Russian military spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.

The ministry said it expects a Ukrainian artillery unit to attack the plant on Friday from the city of Nikopol. “The blame for the consequences [of the strike] will be attributed to the Russian armed forces,” the statement said.

www.rt.com/russia/561073-provocation-nuclear-power-plant

Moldova has received a batch of over a million potassium iodide pills from Romania to help in the event of a nuclear accident, in the context of the fighting in Ukraine at the Zaporizhzhia atomic power plant.

www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/war/romania-gifts-moldova-one-million-potassium-iodide-pills