America monitors "increasing" naval movements from Russia

A senior official in the US Department of Defense (Pentagon) said on Monday that increased naval movements of Russian forces in the Black Sea have been monitored, noting that there are more than one warship there and some bombing operations targeting the Odessa area on the coast of this sea, the source of these ships.

"We don't know if these moves are preparations for a sea landing in Odessa," the official said.

The US official stated that Russian forces have fired more than 1,100 missiles at Ukraine since the start of the war on February 24.

On the recent Russian announcement about the use of hypersonic missiles in the ongoing war, the official said, "We cannot independently confirm Russia's claim," adding that if these allegations are true, "this may be due to the low stockpile of Russian forces of guided missiles."

The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that it had used modern hypersonic "Kingal" (Dagger in Russian) missiles to destroy a fuel storage site in the Mykolaiv region, and to destroy a large underground warehouse for missiles and aircraft munitions in the Ukrainian region of Ivano-Frankivsk near the border with Romania.

And US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin considered that Russia, using such weapons, was "trying to restore momentum" in the war in which its army was involved, noting that it "makes no difference."

The war in Ukraine may cause a humanitarian catastrophe, according to the United Nations, with about 10 million people, or about a quarter of the country's population, fleeing their homes, while the ongoing negotiations between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations have not made tangible progress.

Russian forces are launching a violent attack on the besieged coastal city of Mariupol (southeast), whose streets are filled with corpses, according to testimonies.

Russian forces are trying to encircle the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, where the bombing of a shopping center on Sunday evening left at least eight people dead.

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