Explosions in Vladivostok part of Ukrainian operation damaging base of elite Russian unit, source claims
Ukraine's military intelligence agency (HUR) was behind explosions near Desantnaya Bay in Russia's Vladivostok on May 30, which reportedly damaged military personnel and equipment, a source in HUR told the Kyiv Independent.
According to the source, two blasts occurred early in the morning at a site where Russia's 47th Separate Air Assault Battalion of the 155th Separate Guards Marine Brigade was stationed.
The 155th Marine Brigade has been actively involved in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, including battles in Mariupol and Vuhledar in Donetsk Oblast, as well as operations in Russia's Kursk Oblast.
Local media reported two loud bangs, followed by temporary road closures and emergency vehicles seen in the area, but did not mention anything about a military base.
Russia's Anti-Terrorist Commission of Primorsky Krai attributed the explosions to the ignition of propane-butane cylinders inside a vehicle. No official casualties have been reported.
One of the explosions allegedly happened near a checkpoint, while the other hit the location of personnel and the unit's command.
"Manpower, military equipment, and special equipment were hit," the source claimed.
The Kyiv Independent could not verify these claims.
Desantnaya Bay is located in Vladivostok in Russia's Far East, which lies some 185 kilometers (114 miles) from the Russian-North Korean border.
Read also: Russia 'testing' Europe's capacity to help Ukraine by intensifying air attacks
We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Chicago Tribune
an hour ago
- Chicago Tribune
2 killed in Russian attacks on Ukraine as prospects for talks remain uncertain
KYIV, Ukraine — Russian drone and missile attacks on Ukraine on Saturday killed at least two people, including a 9-year-old girl, officials said, as uncertainty remains about whether Kyiv diplomats will attend a new round of peace talks proposed by Moscow for early next week in Istanbul. Russian troops launched some 109 drones and five missiles across Ukraine overnight and into Saturday, the Ukrainian air force said. Three of the missiles and 42 drones were destroyed and another 30 drones failed to reach their targets without causing damage, it said. The girl was killed in a strike on the front-line village of Dolynka in the Zaporizhzhia region, and a 16-year-old was injured, Zaporizhzhia's Gov. Ivan Fedorov said. 'One house was destroyed. The shockwave from the blast also damaged several other houses, cars, and outbuildings,' Fedorov wrote on Telegram. A man was killed by Russian shelling in Ukraine's Kherson region, Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin wrote on Telegram. Moscow did not comment on either attack. Russia's Ministry of Defense said Saturday that it had gained control of the Ukrainian village of Novopil in the Donetsk region, and took the village of Vodolahy in the northern Sumy region. Ukrainian authorities in Sumy ordered mandatory evacuations in 11 more settlements as Russian forces make steady gains in the area. The new additions bring the total number of settlements under evacuation orders in Sumy, which borders Russia's Kursk region, to 213. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said some 50,000 Russian troops have amassed in the area with the intention of launching an offensive to carve out a buffer zone inside Ukrainian territory. Speaking Saturday, Ukraine's top army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said that Russian forces were focusing their main offensive efforts on Pokrovsk, Toretsk and Lyman in the Donetsk region, as well as the Sumy border area. Syrskyi also said Ukrainian forces are still holding territory in Russia's Kursk region, a statement that Moscow has repeatedly denied. Russia said on April 26 that it had pushed all Ukrainian troops from the Kursk region after Ukrainian troops seized land there during a surprise incursion in August 2024. 'The enemy is holding its best units here,' Syrskyi said referring to Kursk, 'which it planned to use in the east.' Elsewhere, 14 people were injured including four children after Ukrainian drones struck apartment buildings Saturday in the Russian town of Rylsk and the village of Artakovo in the western Kursk region, local acting Gov. Alexander Khinshtein said. Andrii Yermak, a top adviser to Zelenskyy, said Friday that Kyiv was ready to resume direct peace talks with Russia in Istanbul on Monday but that the Kremlin should first provide a promised memorandum setting out its position on ending the more than three-year war. Zelenskyy said Friday that Russia was 'undermining diplomacy' by withholding the document. 'For some reason, the Russians are concealing this document. This is an absolutely bizarre position. There is no clarity about the format,' Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram. Moscow previously said it would share its memorandum during the talks.
New York Post
an hour ago
- New York Post
10 Ukrainian civilians killed in Russian air strikes, while Zelensky slams Russia for ‘not serious' peace talks
A barrage of Russian drone and missile attacks killed at least 10 civilians in Ukraine Saturday — including a 9-year-old girl — as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sowed new doubt whether Monday's peace talks in Istanbul will even take place. At least 32 people were injured in the attacks, as Russian troops launched more than 109 drones and five missiles across Ukraine overnight into Saturday, the country's air force said. The young girl was killed by a Russian strike on the frontline village of Dolynka in the Zaporizhzhia region — a 16-year-old boy was also injured, regional officials confirmed. Advertisement 5 Rescuers work to put out a blaze at the site of a Russian drone strike in the Odesa region. via REUTERS Moscow said Saturday it had gained control of a village in the Donetsk region and one in northern Sumy, leading to mandatory evacuations in 11 Ukrainian settlements near the Russian border – bringing the total number of Sumy settlements under evacuation orders to 213. 5 Ukrainian rescuers worked to extinguish a fire in a trolleybus depot following a drone strike in Kharkiv overnight. AFP via Getty Images Advertisement Zelensky also warned this week that Moscow was amassing more than 50,000 troops nearby in a sign of a possible offensive. In the southern region of Odesa, the attacks hit the town of Izmail, Ukraine's biggest port on the Danube River — infrastructure critical for the war-torn country's imports. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian leader cast uncertainty Saturday whether the planned peace talks scheduled for Monday in Istanbul, Turkey will happen, saying Kyiv is now preparing for 'new diplomatic steps' with Europe and the US. 'There is no clear information about what the Russians are going to Istanbul with. We don't have it, Turkey doesn't have it, the United States doesn't have it, and other partners don't either,' Zelensky said on Telegram. Advertisement 'It doesn't look very serious,' he said of the talks. 5 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is still uncertain Ukraine will attend the talks Monday. Getty Images Zelensky also rebuked Russia for failing to turn over negotiating documents ahead of the Monday meeting – a nonstarter for Kyiv. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov unilaterally announced the talks Wednesday, saying Moscow would present a memorandum towards a cease-fire then. Advertisement But Zelensky countered that the Kremlin's plans should be offered up ahead of time — and accused Moscow of 'doing everything it can to ensure' the meeting is 'fruitless.' 5 Police officers carry a part of a Russian drone after the overnight air strike in Kharkiv. REUTERS 'For a meeting to be meaningful, its agenda must be clear, and the negotiations must be properly prepared,' he wrote on X Friday after hosting Turkey's foreign minister in Kyiv, Ukraine's capital city. Moscow had previously promised to present the document after last week's prisoner's exchange. Ukraine has sent its proposals to the US and Russia, which centers on 'a full and unconditional ceasefire.' 5 Growing increasingly impatient, President Trump gave Putin two weeks to prove he's serious about ending the war. POOL/AFP via Getty Images President Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and on Wednesday gave the Russian leader two weeks to prove he's serious about ending the war. Advertisement The Kremlin's sweeping demands, according to sources, remain unchanged from even before Putin launched his brutal invasion in 2022 — barring Ukraine, and any country east of it, from joining NATO as well as lifting Western sanctions on Russia. Delegations from the two countries last met in Istanbul on May 16 but the session yielded little other than an agreement for the war's largest prisoner swap.
Chicago Tribune
an hour ago
- Chicago Tribune
US defense secretary warns Indo-Pacific allies of ‘imminent' threat from China
SINGAPORE — U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reassured allies in the Indo-Pacific on Saturday that they will not be left alone to face increasing military and economic pressure from China, while insisting that they also contribute more to their own defense. He said Washington will bolster its defenses overseas to counter what the Pentagon sees as rapidly developing threats by Beijing, particularly in its aggressive stance toward Taiwan. China has conducted numerous exercises to test what a blockade would look like of the self-governing island, which Beijing claims as its own and the U.S. has pledged to defend. China's army 'is rehearsing for the real deal,' Hegseth said in a keynote speech at a security conference in Singapore. 'We are not going to sugarcoat it — the threat China poses is real. And it could be imminent.' The head of China's delegation accused Hegseth of making 'groundless accusations.' 'Some of the claims are completely fabricated, some distort facts and some are cases of a thief crying 'stop thief,' said Rear Adm. Hu Gangfeng, vice president of China's National Defense University. He did not offer specific objections. 'These actions are nothing more than attempts to provoke trouble, incite division and stir up confrontation to destabilize the Asia-Pacific region,' he said. China has a stated goal of ensuring its military is capable of taking Taiwan by force if necessary by 2027, a deadline that is seen by experts as more of an aspirational goal than a hard war deadline. China also has built sophisticated, artificial islands in the South China Sea to support new military outposts and developed highly advanced hypersonic and space capabilities, which are driving the United States to create its own space-based 'Golden Dome' missile defenses. Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue, a global security conference hosted by the International Institute for Security Studies, Hegseth said China is no longer just building up its military forces to take Taiwan, it's 'actively training for it, every day.' Hegseth also called out China for its ambitions in Latin America, particularly its efforts to increase its influence over the Panama Canal. He urged Indo-Pacific countries to increase defense spending to levels similar to the 5% of their gross domestic product European nations are now pressed to contribute. 'We must all do our part,' Hegseth said. Following the speech, the European Union's top diplomat Kaja Kallas pushed back at Hegseth's comment that European countries should focus their defense efforts in their own region and leave the Indo-Pacific more to the U.S. She said that with North Korean troops fighting for Russia and China supporting Moscow, European and Asian security were 'very much interlinked.' Hegseth also repeated a pledge made by previous administrations to bolster the U.S. military in the Indo-Pacific to provide a more robust deterrent. While both the Obama and Biden administrations had also committed to pivoting to the Pacific and established new military agreements throughout the region, a full shift has never been realized. Instead, U.S. military resources from the Indo-Pacific have been regularly pulled to support military needs in the Middle East and Europe, especially since the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. In the first few months of President Donald Trump's second term, that's also been the case. In the last few months, the Trump administration has taken a Patriot missile defense battalion out of the Indo-Pacific in order to send it to the Middle East, a massive logistical operation that required 73 military cargo aircraft flights, and sent Coast Guard ships back to the U.S. to help defend the U.S.-Mexico border. Hegseth was asked why the U.S. pulled those resources if the Indo-Pacific is the priority theater. He did not directly answer but said the shift of resources was necessary to defend against Houthi missile attacks launched from Yemen, and to bolster protections against illegal immigration into the U.S. At the same time, he stressed the need for American allies and partners to step up their own defense spending and preparations, saying the U.S. was not interested in going it alone. 'Ultimately a strong, resolute and capable network of allies and partners is our key strategic advantage,' he said. 'China envies what we have together, and it sees what we can collectively bring to bear on defense, but it's up to all of us to ensure that we live up to that potential by investing.' The Indo-Pacific nations caught in between have tried to balance relations with both the U.S. and China over the years. Beijing is the primary trading partner for many, but is also feared as a regional bully, in part due to its increasingly aggressive claims on natural resources such as critical fisheries. Hegseth cautioned that playing both sides, seeking U.S. military support and Chinese economic support, carries risk. 'Economic dependence on China only deepens their malign influence and complicates our defense decision space during times of tension,' Hegseth said. Asked how he would reconcile that statement with Trump's threat of steep tariffs on most in the region, Hegseth he was 'in the business of tanks, not trade.' But Illinois Democrat Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who is part of a congressional delegation attending Shangri-La, objected to pressuring regional allies. 'The United States is not asking people to choose between us and the PRC,' Duckworth said, in reference to the People's Republic of China. Australia's Defense Minister Richard Marles welcomed Hegseth's assurance that the Indo-Pacific was an American strategic priority and agreed that Australia and other nations needed to do their part. 'Reality is that there is no effective balance of power in this region absent the United States, but we cannot leave it to the United States alone,' he said. Still, Marles suggested the Trump administration's aggressive trade policies were counterproductive. 'The shock and disruption from the high tariffs has been costly and destabilizing.' China usually sends its own defense minister to the conference, but Dong Jun did not attend this year in a snub to the U.S. over Trump's erratic tariffs war. His absence was something the U.S. delegation said it intended to capitalize on. 'We are here this morning. And somebody else isn't,' Hegseth said. Asked by a member of the Chinese delegation how committed the U.S. would remain if Asian alliances like ASEAN had differences with Washington, Hegseth said the U.S. would not be constrained by 'the confines of how previous administrations looked at this region.' 'We're opening our arms to countries across the spectrum — traditional allies, non-traditional allies,' he said. He said U.S. support would not require local governments to align with the West on cultural or climate issues.
