A spokesman for the Ukrainian Armed Forces in southern Ukraine said Russian missile strikes in the south on Thursday night were in retaliation for the sinking of a Russian cruiser in Moscow.
Natalia Humeniuk said the attack “did not only affect [Russia’s] ships, but also the imperial ambitions of the enemy “.
He told the media on Friday that after the attack in Moscow, “we all realize that they will not forgive us.”
Ukraine said two of its anti-ship missiles hit the Moskva, while the Kremlin said only that a fire on the ship had led to the final overturning of its Black Sea Fleet flagship.
Humeniuk said that “when the ammunition was fired, it showed that it was loaded enough to continue destroying Ukraine. … The collision led to the explosion of ammunition, they began to fight for survival.”
“We saw other ships trying to help the cruiser, but even nature was on Ukraine’s side, because the storm did not allow either a rescue operation or the evacuation of personnel,” he continued.
Humeniuk referred to Russian missile strikes in the south on Thursday night after the attack in Moscow.
“At the moment there is an attack in Mykolaiv. We see that it is again the use of cluster munitions that are prohibited by international conventions,” he said.
A CNN team in Mykolaiv on Friday heard several rounds of explosions in the morning between 10:20 and 12:00 local time. At least two people were killed in front of an Orthodox church in the city.
Humeniuk said the situation in Mykolaiv and Kherson was “characterized by the fact that the enemy is using its brutal methods of deploying equipment and units between locals and political infrastructure such as schools, kindergartens, hospitals and courtyards in the area.” .
“Then at night they disappear from these positions, leave the villages and bomb them, while accusing the Ukrainian Armed Forces of bombing civilians,” he said.
“Such actions are taken to justify their status as liberators in the occupied territories,” he added.
“We realize that the attacks against us will increase, that the enemy will try to take revenge,” Humeniuk said. “We are ready, we are resisting.”
