Ukraine ‘strikes Russian ammunition depot in Mariupol’
Ukrainian forces blew up a Russian ammunition depot near Mariupol, a local official claimed on Saturday, a city previously considered too far behind the frontline to strike.
Social media channels reportedly showed large explosions lighting up the night sky above the occupied city.
Petro Andriushchenko, an adviser to the ousted Ukrainian mayor of Mariupol, said that the explosions were the result of a Ukrainian attack on an ammunition store.
“The sounds of explosions along the line of Yalta village/Yuryivka village (location of a large concentration of occupiers) in Mariupol district are reported,” he wrote on Telegram. “We verify the reports. An air raid alert was announced in Ukraine, but the occupiers have been struck.”
Mr Andriushchenko’s claim could not be independently verified and it is not clear how Ukrainian forces hit the alleged Russian ammunition depot.
'Mariupol targets in reach'
Mariupol which had a pre-war population of 425,000 lies 60 miles behind the frontline and was thought to be out of range of Ukraine’s Himars, donated by the US, which can fire shells up to 50 miles.
At the beginning of February, the US pledged another military aid package to Ukraine worth £1.8 billion. This included a promise to deliver ground-launched small-diameter bombs which can hit targets 93 miles away. It was not clear when they were due to arrive in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian military did not confirm the alleged strike but a spokesman said that targets that had once been considered out-of-reach were now within range.
“The direction of Mariupol is no longer completely unreachable for us,” the spokesman said.
Valerii Zaluzhnyi, commander of Ukraine’s military, also said in an interview on Friday evening that he wanted to recapture Mariupol this year.
Ukraine has also been attacking Russian targets behind the frontline using sabotage squads and deploying drones to allegedly hit targets deep inside Russia.
Russian forces destroyed Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov, in the first few weeks of the war.
On the eastern frontline in the Donbas, Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Kremlin’s Wagner mercenary group said that his forces had captured the village of Yahidne, just north of Bakhmut.
“At 19.00 on 25th February, storm units of the Wagner private military company secured complete control of the locality of Yagodnoye (Yahidne) to the north of Bakhmut,” Mr Prigozhin said in an audio message posted online.
