Local authorities earlier reported that 35 people had been killed during the overnight shelling of a military base
An air strike on Ukrainian military training facilities in the early hours of Sunday has resulted in the liquidation of “up to 180 foreign mercenaries,” the Russian Ministry of Defense has announced.
The strike, conducted with use of “high-precision long-range weapons,” targeted “the training centers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine” in the village of Starichi and at Yavoriv polygon.
According to the ministry’s spokesman Igor Konashenkov, these facilities served as “a base for the training and combat coordination of foreign mercenaries before they were sent to the combat zones to fight against Russian military personnel.” The sites were also being used to store, as Konashenkov put it, “weapons and military equipment coming from foreign countries.”
“As a result of the strike, up to 180 foreign mercenaries and a large quantity of foreign weapons were destroyed,” Konashenkov said.
He went on to warn that the destruction of foreign mercenaries arriving in Ukraine “would continue.”
Konashenkov’s claims were dismissed by Ukraine as “propaganda.”
“This is not the truth. Pure Russian propaganda,” Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesperson Markiyan Lubkivsky told CNN.
