Image used for representative purpose only
| Photo Credit: AP

Russia on June 23 said the United States had responsibility for a Ukrainian missile attack on Russian-annexed Crimea, which it said killed five people, including three children, and wounded over 100.

A missile exploded above a beach area of the city of Sevastopol, firing shrapnel at people relaxing there, Russian-appointed officials said.

Russia’s defence ministry said Washington and Kyiv bore “responsibility for a deliberate missile strike on peaceful residents”, which it said used US-supplied ATACMS missiles.

Sevastopol governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said in a video posted on Telegram that three children and two adults had died and almost 120 people were injured.

The Black Sea port city and naval base on the Crimean peninsula was annexed by Russia in 2014 but is still internationally recognised as part of Ukraine.

Sevastopol regularly comes under fire from Ukraine but Sunday’s attack was unusually deadly.

Razvozhayev said the attack hit Uchkuyevka, an area with sandy beaches and hotels.

Videos posted on social media showed people running from the beach as explosions went off and people in swimming outfits carrying a stretcher. AFP could not verify their authenticity.

A local news channel on Telegram, ChP Sevastopol, cited witnesses as saying that an elderly woman was killed as she swam in the sea.

Terrorist act

The investigative committee, which probes major crimes, said it was opening an investigation into “a terrorist act”.

The governor said Ukraine had launched five missiles which Russian air defences intercepted over the sea but fragments fell onto the shore wounding people.

Razvozhayev said shrapnel hit beach areas in the north of the city and set fire to a house and woodland.

A Russian defence ministry statement said Ukraine committed a “terrorist attack on the civilian infrastructure of Sevastopol with US-supplied ATACMS tactical missiles loaded with cluster warheads”.

The ministry said four missiles were downed but a fifth changed trajectory after being intercepted “with its warhead exploding in the air over the city”.

It added that “all flight missions for US ATACMS are entered by US specialists based on the US’s own satellite reconnaissance data”.

“Such actions will not be left without a response,” the ministry warned.

Ukraine’s military has not commented on the attack, which came a day after a Russian guided bomb strike on the city of Kharkiv hit an apartment building, killing two people and injuring more than 50.

On Sunday, Russian strikes hit a house and a children’s educational facility in Kharkiv, killing one person and injuring 10 including two teenagers, regional governor Oleg Synegubov said.

A drone launched by Ukraine on Russia’s southern Belgorod region on Sunday killed a man, the governor said.

Three Ukrainian attack drones struck Graivoron, near the border with Ukraine, said Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, with one hitting a car park near a multi-storey block of flats.

“A peaceful civilian was killed. The man died from his wounds at the spot” and three people were wounded, Gladkov wrote on Telegram.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a social media post urged supporter countries to help Ukraine step up attacks on Russian soil.

“We have enough determination to destroy terrorists on their territory – it is only fair — and we need the same determination from our partners. We can stop Russia,” Zelensky wrote.

Moscow and Washington have accused each other of destabilising the South Caucuses region, as thousands of ethnic Armenians fled their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh over ethnic cleansing fears.

“We urge Washington to refrain from extremely dangerous words and actions that lead to an artificial increase in anti-Russian sentiment in Armenia,” Russia’s Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov said on the Telegram messaging app on Tuesday.

Antonov’s comments follow the US State Department spokesman saying on Monday that Russia had shown it was not a reliable partner after Armenia blamed Moscow for failing to intervene in last week’s capture of Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijani forces.

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Armenia had relied on a security partnership with Russia, but relations between the two countries have frayed badly since President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

“I do think that Russia has shown that it is not a security partner that can be relied on,” U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.

Thousands of ethnic Armenians fled the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh by Monday after their fighters were defeated by Azerbaijan in last week’s lightning military operation.

Baku has promised to protect the rights of the roughly 120,000 Armenians who call Karabakh home but many refuse to accept its assurances. Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan blamed Russia for failing to ensure Armenian security.

Washington and a number of its Western allies condemned the Azeri hostilities, which have changed the contours of the South Caucasus – a patchwork of ethnicities crisscrossed with oil and gas pipelines where Russia, the United States, Turkey and Iran vie for influence.

Moscow has said Armenia only had itself to blame for Azerbaijan’s victory over Karabakh because it flirted with the West rather than working with Moscow and Baku for peace.

On Monday, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) chief Samantha Power and U.S. State Department Acting Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasian Affairs Yuri, arrived in Armenia, in the first visit by senior U.S. officials since the Karabakh Armenians were forced into a ceasefire last week.

From 1988-1994 about 30,000 people were killed and more thana million people, mostly ethnic Azeris, displaced as theArmenians threw off nominal Azerbaijani control in what is nowknown as the First Karabakh War.

Azerbaijan gained back territory in and aroundNagorno-Karabakh in a second war in 2020, which ended with aMoscow-brokered peace deal and the deployment of a contingent ofRussian peacekeepers.

Turkey, who backed Azerbaijan with weaponry in the 2020conflict, said last week it supported the aims of theAzerbaijan’s latest military operation but played no part in it.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)