Russia claims to have shot down a Ukrainian plane full of weapons and ammunition

Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday that its forces shot down a Ukrainian military transport plane loaded with weapons and ammunition near the Black Sea port of Odesa.

General Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense, stated that in the past day, Russian forces also shot down 17 enemy unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), including at least two Bayraktar-TB2. in the Lugansk, Kharkov and Mykolaiv regions.

Russian missiles also hit an artillery training center in the Sumy region of Ukraine, the ministry said. It is known that here, foreign instructors are working to train Ukrainian soldiers to use artillery systems that the West has just supplied to Ukraine. Another attack destroyed an outpost of “foreign mercenaries” in the Odesa region, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Regarding the military situation in Severodonetsk, the Russian Defense Ministry said that Russian forces had forced the Ukrainian army to gradually withdraw its forces to the other side of the Donets River after suffering heavy losses.

However, Russia says that some Ukrainian units are still trying to hold on inside Severodonetsk – a strategic city in Luhansk – the last bastion Kiev is trying to resist here.

“Ukrainian authorities, realizing that it was impossible to continue to resist and try to hold the industrial area of ​​Severodonetsk, ordered a combined tactical unit to mine the nitrate and nitric acid tanks in the house. machine Azot”, the Russian Defense Ministry stated.

According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the conflict in Ukraine has left 4,183 civilians dead and more than 5,000 injured. The actual number is thought to be much higher than the statistics because many areas are difficult to access and field reports are difficult to verify.

Meanwhile, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has so far recorded more than 6.9 million Ukrainians have had to leave the country after February 24, the time when Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine.