Seven killed by bridge blasts in Russian regions
MOSCOW: At least seven people were killed and 69 injured when two bridges were blown up in separate Russian regions bordering Ukraine ahead of planned peace talks aimed at ending the three-year-old war in Ukraine, Russian officials said on Sunday. A highway bridge over a railway in the Bryansk region was blown up at 10:50 pm on Saturday night just as a passenger train carrying 388 passengers to Moscow was passing underneath, Russian investigators said. Just four hours later, a railway bridge over a highway was blown up in the neighbouring Kursk region showering the road with parts of a freight train, the investigators said.
Russia's Investigative Committee, which probes serious crimes, linked the incidents and said explicitly that both bridges were blown up. In the Bryansk region, social media pictures and videos showed passengers trying to climb out of smashed carriages in the dark. Part of the passenger train was shown crushed under a collapsed road bridge and wrecked carriages lay beside the lines. "The bridge was blown up while the Klimovo-Moscow train was passing through with 388 passengers on board," Alexander Bogomaz, the region's governor, told Russian television.
The Russian regions bordering Ukraine have been subject to frequent attacks by Ukraine since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Both sides accuse the other of targeting civilians, and both deny such accusations. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine on the incidents, which took place just a day before the United States wants Russia and Ukraine to sit down to direct talks in Istanbul to discuss a possible end to a war which, according to Washington, has killed and injured at least 1.2 million people.
Ukraine's HUR military intelligence agency said on Sunday that an explosion had derailed a Russian military train hauling cargo and fuel trucks near the settlement of Yakymivka, in a Russian-controlled part of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region. The agency did not claim responsibility or attribute the explosion to anyone, though Ukraine has in the past claimed a series of attacks deep into Russia.
Russian politicians lined up to blame Ukraine, saying it was clearly sabotage aimed at derailing the peace talks which the United States has demanded. "This is definitely the work of the Ukrainian special services," the chairman of the defence committee of the lower house of the Russian parliament, Andrei Kartapolov, told the SHOT Telegram channel. "All this is aimed at toughening the position of the Russian Federation and stoking aggression before the negotiations. And also to intimidate people. But they won't succeed."
US President Donald Trump has demanded the sides make peace and he has threatened to walk away if they do not - potentially pushing responsibility for supporting Ukraine onto the shoulders of European powers. But as politicians talk of peace negotiations, the war is heating up, with swarms of drones launched by both Russia and Ukraine and Russian troops advancing at key points along the front in eastern Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Ukraine attacked Russian nuclear-capable long-range bombers at a military base in Siberia on Sunday, the first such attack so far from the front lines more than 4,300 km away, according to pro-Russian bloggers. Unverified video and pictures posted on social media showed Russian strategic bombers - whose purpose is to drop nuclear bombs on distance targets - on fire at the Belaya air base north of Irkutsk.
A Ukrainian intelligence official said that Ukraine's domestic security agency, the SBU, conducted a large drone attack on over 40 Russian military aircraft. The Ukrainian source, speaking on condition of anonymity to Reuters in Kyiv, said the struck aircraft included Tu-95 and Tu-22 strategic bombers, which Russia uses to fire long-range missiles at Ukraine.
Igor Kobzev, the governor of Irkutsk, said that there had been a drone attack on a military unit near the village of Sredny in the Usolsky district, but did not mention strategic aviation. In video that he posted on Telegram, drones could be heard flying overhead and a giant plume of smoke rising into the sky. — Reuters
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Observer
17 hours ago
- Observer
Police, clergy scuffle in Armenia as standoff escalates
YEREVAN: A scuffle broke out in Armenia on Friday between clergymen and police, part of an escalating standoff between the influential Church and the Caucasian nation's authorities. The Two sides have been at loggerheads since Catholicos Garegin II — the church's spiritual leader — began calling for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to resign over Armenia's military defeat to Azerbaijan in 2020. The loss of the disputed Karabakh region to Azerbaijan in 2023, Armenia's arch-foe, has divided the country and escalated the dispute. On Wednesday, the Armenian authorities said they had foiled a coup plot involving a senior cleric who had rallied opposition to Pashinyan and more than a dozen other suspects. The latest confrontation erupted after police arrived at the residence of the head of the Apostolic Church to arrest another senior figure, archbishop Mikael Adjapahyan. He is accused of publicly calling for the government to be overthrown. Masked police attempted to enter the residence of Garegin II to arrest Adjapahyan. Prosecutors had earlier charged him with "public calls aimed at seizing power... and violently overthrowing the constitutional order". Following the scuffle between priests and law enforcement officers, Adjapahyan said he would surrender to police but denied any wrongdoing. "This is a blatant act of lawlessness against me," he said. "I have never been a threat to our country. The real threat sits in government. I won't hide. I'll go with them." But locals and priests closed the gates of the residence, preventing Adjapahyan from leaving the premises and surrendering to police. Armenia's security service said it would deploy additional forces to detain Adjapahyan. Earlier this month, Pashinyan escalated the feud with the church by accusing Garegin II of fathering an illegitimate child and urging believers to oust him. That prompted calls for Pashinyan to be excommunicated. An Armenian court put an influential cleric into two months of pre-trial detention on coup attempt charges, a day after authorities claimed to have foiled a plot to overthrow the government. On Thursday, "a court of general jurisdiction in Yerevan decided to send Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan to a pre-trial detention for a period of two months," one of his lawyers, Hovhannes Khudoyan, told journalists. Armenia's Investigative Committee said the court granted motions for pre-trial detention for all the detained, adding that "15 suspects have been placed in custody". Later on Thursday, Armenia's prosecutor general office announced it had opened a criminal case against another senior cleric. — AFP
Observer
17 hours ago
- Observer
Russian missile attack kills five in Ukraine's southeast
KYIV: A Russian missile attack on Friday killed at least five people and wounded more than 20 in the industrial city of Samar in Ukraine's southeast, officials said, the second strike on the city in three days. At least four of the wounded were in severe condition and were taken to hospital, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said on the Telegram messaging app. Officials gave no immediate details on damage in the city, where an attack on an unidentified infrastructure facility on Tuesday killed two people. Hundreds of kilometres to the south, in the Kherson region, authorities urged residents on Friday to prepare for extended periods without power after a Russian attack hit a key energy facility. Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on Telegram that "Russians decided to plunge the region into darkness". In recent weeks Russia has stepped up attacks on Ukrainian cities, particularly its capital Kyiv, more than three years into the war that followed its full-scale attack. The Ukrainian air force said Russia had launched 363 long-range drones and eight missiles overnight into Friday, targeting a small western city of Starokostiantyniv, home to an important air base. There were no details on damage. Russia's drone production jumped by 16.9% in May compared to the previous month, data from a think tank close to the government showed on Friday, after President Vladimir Putin called for output to be stepped up. Putin in April said that more than 1.5 million drones of various types had been produced last year, including about 4,000 first-person view (FPV) drones — lightweight models designed for precision targeting, but said that troops fighting on the front line in Ukraine needed more. Both sides have deployed drones on a huge scale, using them to spot and hit targets not only on the battlefield but way beyond the front lines. Drone production growth of 16.9% in May was significantly higher than previous months, according to the Centre for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting, an economic think tank close to the government. The average monthly increase in the previous five months was 3.7%, the report said and the level in May was 1.6 times higher than average monthly output in 2024. Moscow has been developing a new laser-based system to defend against drones, especially important as Ukrainian drones frequently strike sites deep inside Russia such as oil depots, refineries and airfields. A Russian attack damaged energy infrastructure in Ukraine's southern Kherson region, its governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on the Telegram messaging app on Friday. He said the attack on an "important power facility" caused power cuts in some settlements in the region, which is close to front lines with Russian forces. A Ukrainian drone attack on Russia's Kursk region on the border with Ukraine injured a war correspondent from the Chinese news outlet Phoenix TV, Russian authorities said late on Thursday, urging the United Nations to respond to the incident. "A Ukrainian drone today struck the village of Korenevo in the Korenevsky district," acting governor of the Kursk region, Alexander Khinshtein, said on the Telegram messaging app. "A 63-year-old correspondent, Lu Yuguang, who went to the border area on his own, was injured." Khinshtein said in a later post that the journalist had skin cuts to his head and after treatment, refused hospitalisation. Russia's foreign ministry called on the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and other international organisations to "promptly respond and give a proper assessment" of the incident. "The targeted attack... indicates the intention of the Kyiv regime to silence and de facto destroy representatives of any media that seek to convey objective information," Maria Zakharova, the foreign ministry's spokeswoman, said. — Reuters
Times of Oman
17 hours ago
- Times of Oman
Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov says NATO buildup won't have 'any significant effect' on Russia
Moscow: NATO's recent decision to ramp up military spending will not significantly impact Russia's security, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday, according to a report by Russia Today. Speaking at a press conference, Lavrov dismissed the West's claim of a Russian threat as unfounded and reiterated Moscow's openness to peace talks if the core issues behind the Ukraine conflict are addressed. His remarks came after the NATO summit in The Hague, where member states pledged to increase defense expenditure to 5% of GDP by 2035, citing the "long-term threat posed by Russia to Euro-Atlantic security." US President Donald Trump described the agreement as a "monumental win," having long urged European allies to contribute more to their defense. Responding to a question on whether Russia views the NATO buildup as a threat, Lavrov stated, "I don't think it will have any significant effect." He added, "We know what goals we are pursuing; we don't hide them, we state them openly, and they are absolutely legitimate in terms of any interpretation of the UN Charter and international law. We know by what means we will always ensure these goals." RT reported that Moscow has consistently denied any plans to attack NATO countries, calling such accusations "nonsense" used by Western officials to justify increased military budgets. Lavrov also said Russia remains willing to engage in dialogue if NATO addresses root concerns, including its expansion toward Russia's borders and continued military support for Ukraine's NATO ambitions. According to RT, the European Commission earlier this month approved the allocation of approximately Euro 335 billion in pandemic recovery funds for military purposes. In May, it introduced a Euro 150 billion debt facility to support defense initiatives. Ukraine is also allowed access to these resources alongside EU member states. Moscow has condemned these developments as evidence of NATO's sustained hostility. RT noted that President Vladimir Putin has accused the alliance of fabricating threats to manipulate public sentiment and escalate an arms race. At the summit, when asked what NATO's warnings of a Russian threat were based on, Secretary General Mark Rutte reportedly failed to cite any specific intelligence assessments, instead pointing to broad concerns.
