Russia detains 50 Ukrainian 'nationalists' in effort to crush underground resistance
Russia’s National Guard says it has detained 50 suspected Ukrainian nationalists in the occupied south in a clear attempt to showcase to the Kremlin their efforts to stamp out underground resistance.
The National Guard, which typically dealt with protest rallies at home before the war, said in a statement on Monday that the unidentified 50 people were detained in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions and some of them had weapons caches with two dozen grenade launchers, 12 portable surface-to-surface missile systems, rifles and ammunition.
Authorities did not say if the arrested people were facing any charges but merely said they were “suspected members of Ukrainian nationalist groups”.
The report comes the day after Ukrainian authorities claimed that the occupation administration moved its key members out of Kherson to Melitopol, deeper behind front lines, allegedly fearing Russian attacks. Separately, Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, sacked three regional chiefs of the security agency SBU.
Two spy chiefs in western Ukraine and the SBU head in Kyiv were dismissed a month after Mr Zelensky fired the head of the SBU over suspected security lapses including the failure to weed out Russian collaborateurs in the ranks in southern Ukraine.
US shows support for Poland on army holiday
The Polish president and other officials marked their nation's Armed Forces Day holiday today alongside the US army commander in Europe and regular American troops, in a symbolic show of support for NATO members on the eastern front as Russia wages war nearby in Ukraine.
General Darryl Williams, the new commanding general of United States Army Europe and Africa, attended the ceremony in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Solider in downtown Warsaw and said the US presence was meant to deliver a message of "strength and resilience"
"It is about deterrence, about being strong, NATO is strong, the Polish people are strong, and we are standing shoulder to should with them," he said.The holiday commemorates Poland's victory in 1920 over Soviet Russia in the Battle of Warsaw, which stopped the Bolshevik army's westward advance.
Three killed by explosive device in sea off OdesaThree civilians have been killed and two wounded by an explosive device while swimming in the Black Sea in the Ukrainian southern region of Odesa, local police have said.The accident happened on Sunday when several people working on a construction site ignored barriers and warning signs on the beach and went swimming in the sea in the Belhorod-Dnistrovskyi district."In the water, as a result of an explosion of an unknown object, three men aged 25, 32 and 53 years old were killed," the police said in a written statement.
It added that another man and a woman had been wounded.
This summer Ukrainian authorities closed sea beaches because of mines or artillery shells because of the war with Russia and shelling by Russian forces.