BUCHAREST, Romania – Police in the Moldovan separatist region of Transnistria say two explosions on Tuesday morning in a radio facility close to Ukrainian border knocked two powerful antennas out of service.
The incident occurred in a small town of Maiac roughly 12 kilometers (7 miles) west of the border with Ukraine, according to the region’s Interior Ministry. It comes just a day after several explosions believed to be caused by rocket-propelled grenades were reported to hit the Ministry of State Security in the city of Tiraspol, the region’s capital.
No one was hurt in the explosions, officials said.
Transnistria, a strip of land with about 470,000 people between Moldova and Ukraine, has been under the control of separatist authorities since a 1992 war with Moldova.
Russia bases about 1,500 troops there nominally as peacekeepers, but concerns are high that the forces could be used to invade Ukraine.
A senior Russian military official, Rustam Minnekayev, said last week that Russian forces aim to take full control of southern Ukraine, saying such a move would open the way to Transnistria.
___
KEY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR:
– Putin gets what he didn’t want: Ukraine army closer to West
– Top Russian diplomat warns Ukraine against provoking WWIII
– France’s victorious Macron boosts weapons, stakes in Ukraine
– Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra organized by Met, Polish operas
– Follow all AP stories on Russia‘s war on Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
___
OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:
KYIV, Ukraine – Four people died and nine more were wounded on Monday in the Russian shelling of the Donetsk region, the region’s governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said Tuesday.
Two of the victims were children: a 9-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy, Kyrylenko said in the messaging app Telegram.
Governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Haidai, said the Russians have shelled civilians 17 times over the past 24 hours, with the cities of Popasna, Lysychansk and Girske suffering the most.
“Popasna withstood four powerful artillery attacks, and Lysychansk withstood two. There is damage to two houses in Lysychansk, two in Popasna, at least one in Girske. We are checking the information about the victims,” Haidai said Tuesday on Telegram.
Rocket strikes were also reported in the Zaporizhzhia region Tuesday morning by local officials.
___
KYIV, Ukraine – Ukrainian forces have repelled six attacks in the past 24 hours in the two regions that comprise the Donbas, Ukraine’s industrial heartland, the General Staff said in its Tuesday morning update.
The Ukrainian army has destroyed four Russian tanks, five artillery systems, 13 units of armored vehicles, 15 units of motor vehicles, two tankers and one anti-aircraft gun, the update said.
Ukraine’s General Staff says Russian forces continue offensive operations in the country’s east in an effort to take full control of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and establish a land corridor to Crimea.
Fighting continues around the cities of Rubizhne and Popasna in the Luhansk region, the update said. The Russian forces also continue to shell Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, and to block Ukrainian units in the area of Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol – the last remaining stronghold of the Ukrainian forces in the besieged port city.
In the area of ?Velyka Oleksandrivka, a village in the Kherson region largely controlled by the Russians, Ukrainian forces destroyed an ammunition depot and “eliminated” more than 70 Russian troops, the General Staff said.
___
LVIV, Ukraine – The British Defense Ministry says Russian forces have taken the Ukrainian city of Kreminna.
Street-to-street fighting had been going on for days in the city in Ukraine’s Luhansk region, with civilian evacuations there made impossible by the war.
In a tweet early Tuesday, the British military said: “The city of Kreminna has reportedly fallen and heavy fighting is reported south of Izium as Russian forces attempt to advance towards the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk from the north and east.”
There was no immediate response from the Ukrainian government. Russia claimed days earlier to have taken the city.
Kreminna is some 575 kilometers (355 miles) southeast of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.
The United Kingdom has been providing daily intelligence reports publicly since the start of the war. The British military did not say how it knew that Kreminna had fallen.
___
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned Monday that Ukraine risks provoking World War III and said the threat of a nuclear conflict “should not be underestimated.”
In an in-depth Russian TV interview, Lavrov blamed Ukraine for stalled talks between the two countries, and accused the United States and Britain of pressuring Kyiv not to reach agreement.
“Everyone is reciting incantations that in no case can we allow World War III,” Lavrov said, and accused Ukrainian leaders of provoking Russia by asking NATO to become involved in the conflict.
By providing weapons, NATO forces are “pouring oil on the fire,” he said, according to a Russian transcript on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website.
Lavrov apparently made the remarks after U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the United States wants “to see Russia weakened to the point where it can’t do things like invade Ukraine.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told The Associated Press in an interview Monday that only discussions between Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin would bring resolution.
___
KYIV, Ukraine – Ukraine’s foreign minister on Monday urged the U.N. chief to press Russia for an evacuation of the besieged port of Mariupol, calling it something the world body is capable of achieving.
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told The Associated Press in an interview he was concerned that by visiting Moscow on Tuesday before traveling to Kyiv, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres could be vulnerable to falling into a Kremlin “trap” in the war.
Kuleba said Guterres “should focus primarily on one issue: evacuation of Mariupol.
An estimated 100,000 people are trapped in the seaside city while a contingent of Ukrainian fighters hold out against Russian forces in a steel mill where hundreds of civilians also are taking shelter.
___
MARIUPOL, Ukraine – Officials in the embattled Ukrainian city of Mariupol say a new mass grave has been identified north of the city.
Mayor Vadym Boychenko said authorities are trying to estimate the number of victims in the grave about 10 kilometers (about 6 miles) north of Mariupol.
Satellite photos released over the past several days have shown what appear to be images of other mass graves.
Mariupol has been decimated by fierce fighting over the past two months. The capture of the city would deprive Ukraine of a vital port and allow Moscow to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.