Ukrainian military said it is “clarifying” information received about the alleged murder of Russian commander Viktor Sokolov, after Moscow released a video in which he is apparently portrayed alive.
On Monday (25), Kiev claimed to have killed Sokolov, commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, in an attack on the fleet’s headquarters in Crimea, occupied last Friday (22).
Following the statement, the Russian Defense Ministry released a video recording of Sokolov participating in a meeting with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and other local military leaders.
Ukraine’s new Defense Minister Rustem Umerov told the host of CNN CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that if Sokolov is dead, “it will be good news for everyone.”
In an exclusive interview, he neither confirmed nor denied that Sokolov had been killed in the attack. “He [Sokolov] it is in our temporarily occupied territories, but it should not be there. So if he is dead, it is good news for everyone that we continue to vacate our territory,” Umerov said.
In the Russian images, a man who resembles the commander participates in the meeting via video conference. The name tape on his uniform says “Sokolov VN,” and his screen shows the Cyrillic letters “ČF,” the abbreviation for Black Sea Fleet. A CNN could not confirm whether the person appearing in the footage is Sokolov.
The Ukrainian Special Operations Forces announced, in a messaging application, that “as the Russians were urgently forced to publish a response with Sokolov supposedly alive, our units are clarifying the information”.
“Sources claim that the Commander of the Black Sea Fleet is among the dead. Many corpses have not yet been identified due to the fragmentation of the bodies”, adds the statement.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the claim that Sokolov was killed.
Ukraine’s actions in Crimea
Ukrainian Defense Intelligence spokesman Andrii Yusov said Russia used Crimea as a “logistics hub” and that “the ultimate goal, of course, is the disoccupation of Ukrainian Crimea.”
Ukraine has increasingly struck Russian strategic targets in the Black Sea region of Crimea, occupied by Moscow since 2014.
Before the most recent action, Ukrainians carried out a series of attacks on Crimea. They struck a Russian military airfield in Saky, degraded Russian air defenses on the northwest coast, and carried out a missile attack on the main dry dock and ship repair facility in Sevastopol, crippling an attack submarine and a landing ship.
Russia named Sokolov as its new commander of the Crimea-based Black Sea Fleet in August 2022, state media outlet “TASS” reported at the time.
Sokolov had served as head of the Naval Academy since 2020. He served as deputy commander of the Northern Fleet from 2013 to 2020. The change of command came amid heavy losses and a series of explosions at Russian military installations in Crimea.
See also: Drones are the main weapon used by Russia and Ukraine in the war
Source: CNN Brasil
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