‘Ammo dump missile strike’ brings occupiers within range

UKRAINIAN forces blew up a Russian ammunition depot near Mariupol, a local official said yesterday. The city was previously considered too far behind the front line 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 the explosions resulted from 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 couldn’t be independently verified and it is not clear how Ukrainian forces hit the alleged Russian ammunition depot.

Mariupol, which had a pre-war population of 450,000, lies 60 miles behind the front line and was thought to be out of range of Ukraine’s Himars, which can fire shells up to 50 miles.

This month, the US pledged another military aid package, including groundlaunched small-diameter bombs that can hit targets 93 miles away. It is not clear when they are due to arrive.

A Ukrainian military spokesman said that targets once considered out of reach were now within range. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, commander of Ukraine’s military, stated on Friday that he wanted to recapture Mariupol this year.

Russian targets behind the front line have also been attacked using sabotage squads and drones.

Russian forces destroyed Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov, in the first few weeks of the war.

On the eastern front line in Donbas, Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group, said his forces had captured Yahidne, north of Bakhmut.