Moscow [Russia], May 1: Ukraine has attacked Russian military bases in Crimea with US-supplied missiles, the Russian Defence Ministry said on Tuesday.
It said Russian air defence systems repelled six long-range ATACMS missiles in the past 24 hours.
Independent media reported hits on three military bases on Monday night, injuring several people.
Several soldiers were reportedly injured after a fire broke out during an attack on an air defence position near the Crimean capital Simferopol, according to the independent website Astra.
Sergei Aksyonov, the Moscow-appointed governor of Crimea, said a missile attack on the village of Donske near Simferopol was intercepted. However, he warned of unexploded ammunition remnants.
The Dzhankoy airport in the north of Crimea, where a Russian helicopter regiment and air defence forces are stationed, also came under fire again. According to media reports, five soldiers were injured there.
Astra said four further soldiers were injured in an attack on a military target in the Chornomorske district in the north-west of the peninsula.
The US said it would be supplying long-range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine as part of the new weapons package agreed in Congress in April.
Previous US missile deliveries had a range of 165 kilometres.
Simferopol is more than 200 kilometres away from the front line.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he does not expect his country to join NATO during the country's war with Russia.
"In my personal opinion, we will only join NATO after we have won," he said at a joint event with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in the Ukrainian capital Kiev on Tuesday.
All 32 NATO members must agree to admit a new country. Several members have expressed fears over the risk of Ukraine joining the alliance, worried that their own troops could get pulled into direct conflict with Russia.
"For Ukraine to be accepted into the alliance politically, it needs victory," said Zelensky.
Ukraine has been defending itself against the Russian invasion for more two years with the support of NATO member states.
In 2019, Kiev enshrined the goal of NATO membership in its constitution. Preventing Ukraine's accession is one of Russia's declared war aims.
The Kiev authorities began dismantling a Soviet-era monument marking the connection between Russia and Ukraine on Tuesday, more than two years after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
It will take several days to fully tear down the red granite monument, which consists of some 20 elements, the city administration said. It is a group of statues showing Ukrainian Cossacks surrounding hetman, or "leader," Bohdan Khmelnytskyi and the Moscow ambassador.
It sits below a steel rainbow-shaped installation near the bank of the Dnipro River.
The statues, said to weigh some 6,000 to 7,000 tons, are to be relocated to an aviation museum.
Source: Qatar Tribune
