Russian forces announced the foiling of a naval attack in Crimea while the head of the Russian Wagner Group vowed to kill all Ukrainian prisoners on the battlefront.
The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that its forces foiled an attack with 3 drones on the Russian Black Sea Fleet in the Crimean city of Sevastopol, adding that the three boats were destroyed.
Earlier, the governor of the city of Sevastopol Mikhail Razvogaev said that the port of the city, which houses the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, was attacked at dawn by two naval drones.
Razvogaev added – via the Telegram application – that the Russian forces tasked with defending the port destroyed one of the boats, while the other exploded on its own, noting that this confrontation took place outside the port, whose facilities were not damaged.
Naval drones are remotely operated equipment that has been used in what are believed to be Ukrainian attacks on Russian targets in the Black Sea.
According to Western intelligence reports, Russia has set up large fortifications in Crimea in anticipation of a Ukrainian attack on the area, which Ukrainian officials have repeatedly said their country is determined to recapture.
Wagner's chief vowed to kill all Ukrainian captives (Reuters)
Wagner threatens
Meanwhile, Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Russian Wagner Armed Group, which is fighting alongside the Russian army in Ukraine, ordered the killing of Ukrainian soldiers instead of imprisoning them.
He added that his members would no longer adopt a strategy of imprisoning Ukrainian soldiers but would kill them, in response to what he says was the execution of one of his men by Ukrainian forces.
In an audio message published by his group's Telegram media system, Prigozhine said: "We do not know the name of our injured operative who was killed by desperate Ukrainians. But we will kill everyone on the front line, we will not imprison anyone" anymore.
Kherson Front
In other developments on the ground, the Institute for the Study of War, a U.S. think tank, quoted Russian military bloggers as saying that Ukrainian forces had crossed into the eastern bank of the Kherson River (south) that was under the control of Russian forces.
The institute also quoted Russian bloggers as saying that Ukrainian forces have fixed positions on the east bank of the river, and that Russian forces may have lost control of two islands and parts of the territory there.
Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-appointed governor of Kherson, denied the report by the Institute for the Study of War, saying that the Russian army was on the east bank of the river, and Saldo wrote on Telegram: "Hostile subversive groups may sometimes carry out selfie landings, before our fighters destroy them or push them into the water."
On the Ukrainian side, Natalia Humenyuk, a spokeswoman for Ukraine's Southern Command, did not confirm or deny the report, calling for "media silence" to ensure operational security.
Russia withdrew its troops from the west bank of the Kherson River last November.