Ukraine comments on Sevastopol beach attack: Crimea is a military camp

Mikhail Podolyak, advisor to the head of the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said that there was not and could not be any peaceful life in Crimea. Podolyak's statement came a day after the attack of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Sevastopol, when four people, including two children, were killed and more than 150 more people suffered various injuries.

"In Crimea, there are not and cannot be any "beaches”, "tourist zones” and other fictitious signs of "peaceful life”. Crimea is certainly a foreign territory occupied by Russia, where fighting is taking place, a full-scale war is going on. The war that Russia unleashed solely for genocidal and aggressive purposes. Crimea is also a large military camp and warehouse, with hundreds of direct military targets, which the Russians are cynically trying to disguise and cover with their own civilians, who in turn are civilian occupiers,” Podolyak said.

Russian MP Alexei Chepa said that Russia would not leave Podolyak's threats unanswered.

"These threats are blackmail. Blackmail of the authorities, blackmail of the population. Obviously, the Americans understand that the conditions of negotiations are quite weak for them today, and they have not achieved what they planned. That's why they are now trying to change the situation, to intimidate the people, to intimidate the country's leadership," Chepa said.

According to Senator Sergei Tsekov, Russia's demands during possible negotiations with Ukraine will become more stringent after the attack on Sevastopol. They will be completely different than they were two or three days ago, the official said.

Moscow accused Washington of open hybrid war against the Russian Federation. The Russian Foreign Ministry said that it was the United States that transferred ATACMS missiles with cluster munitions to Ukraine.

In response to this, Peter Stano, EU's Lead Spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, said that statements about the strike on Sevastopol with long-range NATO weapons were unreliable. The European Union does not condemn the incident, the official said. According to him, Russia's statements about Kyiv's actions "have credibility close to zero and cannot be trusted.”

On the afternoon of June 23, the Ukrainian Armed Forces launched five ATACMS missiles with cluster warheads at Sevastopol. Russian air defense systems intercepted four of them, another onedeviated from the flight path and exploded over the city. Its debris scattered across the beach area with many vacationers on it. According to most recent reports, two of the injured children remain in extremely serious condition, six others are in intensive care. Twenty-two of the injured, including 12 children, were flown to Moscow for urgent treatment.