Crimea

Traffic on the key bridge connecting Crimea to Russia's mainland has been halted amid reports of explosions.

The health ministry in Russia's Krasnodar region, which lies at the eastern end of the bridge, said two people were killed in an unspecified accident on the bridge and their daughter was injured.

Russian forces are blasting the workshops of the factory located in Armyansk, on the northern part of that Black Sea peninsula, which Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed to Russia in 2014, according to GUR. Ukraine has promised to take back Crimea in a counter-offensive.

Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson Oblast military Administration appointed by Ukraine, recently warned that the detonation of explosives would lead to a catastrophe worse than the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986, the Kyiv Post writes.

A fuel depot caught fire overnight in the Russian village of Volna, close to the bridge to the Crimean peninsula, the local governor said early Wednesday.

A massive fire erupted at an oil reservoir in Crimea after it was hit by a drone, a Russia-appointed official there reported Saturday.

Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Moscow-installed governor of the Black Sea peninsula's port city of Sevastopol, posted videos and photos of the blaze on his Telegram channel.

Ukrainian military forces have successfully established positions on the eastern side of the Dnieper River, according to a new analysis, giving rise to speculation Sunday that the advances could be an early sign of Kiev's long-awaited spring counteroffensive.

Ukrainian authorities have asked Turkey to impound a ship carrying 19,000 tons of barley harvested from regions occupied by Russia, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Referring to the Russian invasion, Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias insisted on Thursday that revisionist ambitions must not go unanswered and that Greece has "from day one stood in full solidarity with Ukraine, providing all necessary assistance and support."

The same source told the German newspaper that the Western allies are already sending Ukraine everything it needs for those attacks, which are supposed to create a "land bridge" to Crimea.

As the governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, announced on his Telegram channel, a total of three drones that tried to enter the bay were destroyed and the warships were not destroyed.
"Our sailors shot at them with small arms. Air defense was also working," wrote the governor of Sevastopol, where the main base of the Black Sea Fleet is located.