A spokesperson for the Ukrainian Armed Forces in southern Ukraine suggested that Russian missile attacks in the south since Thursday night were in retaliation for the sinking of the Russian cruiser Moskva.
Natalia Humeniuk said the attack had “affected not only [Russia’s] ships, but also the enemy’s imperial ambitions.”
She told a media briefing Friday that after the attack on the Moskva, “we all realize that we will not be forgiven.”
Ukraine said two of its anti-ship missiles hit the Moskva, while the Kremlin has said only that a fire on board led to the eventual capsizing of the flagship of its Black Sea fleet.
Humeniuk said that “when the ammunition detonated, that showed they had been loaded enough to keep destroying Ukraine. …The impact led to the detonation of ammunition, they started struggling for survival.”
“We saw other ships try to help the cruiser, but even the nature was on Ukraine’s side, because the storm did not allow to carry out either a rescue operation or evacuate personnel,” she continued.
Humeniuk referenced Russian missile attacks in the south since Thursday night after the Moskva attack.
“Currently there is an attack in Mykolaiv. We see that this is again the use of cluster munitions prohibited by international conventions,” she said.
A CNN team in Mykolaiv Friday heard multiple rounds of explosions in the morning between 10:20 a.m. and 12 p.m. local time. At least two people were killed in front of an Orthodox church in the city.
Humeniuk said that the situation in Mykolaiv and Kherson regions “is characterized by the fact that the enemy uses its brutal manners in the placing of equipment and units in-between the local civilians and the civilian infrastructure like schools, kindergartens, hospitals, and the yards of local residents.”
“Then at night they disappear from these positions, leave the villages and shell them, while accusing the Ukrainian Armed Forces of shelling civilians,” she said.
“Such actions are conducted in order to justify their status of liberators in the occupied territories,” she added.
“We realize that attacks on us will increase, that the enemy will try to take revenge,” Humeniuk said. “We are ready, we are resisting.”