Russian Shelling in Kherson Kills 2, Injures 12, Including Infant

Russian shelling hit the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson Monday, killing three people and injuring at least 12, including a 2-month-old infant, according to local governor Oleksandr Prokudin.

Since their liberation last year, Kherson and the western bank of the Dnipro River have been regularly bombarded by Russians from Dnipro’s eastern bank. There are usually rounds of air alerts during the day.

Two people were killed and 10 more injured in an afternoon combined attack in the central part of the city, Prokudin said.

“Eight vehicles, including one ambulance, an administrative building, a hospital, and at least fifteen houses were destroyed or damaged,” he added.

In a separate message, the governor said on the Telegram messaging app, a car was shot at in a suburb of Kherson, killing one person and wounding a 2-month-old infant and his mother.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksandr Dubinsky has been formally notified that he is suspected of treason for allegedly spreading misinformation about Ukraine’s political leadership and cooperation with Russia’s military intelligence, officials said on Monday.

In his own post on Telegram, Dubinsky called the notice of suspicion fabricated and “based on the absolute lies of top state officials.”

The Security Service of Ukraine, known as the SBU, said the suspect was a member of a criminal organization, created in 2016 and financed by Russia’s military intelligence.

“It is established that on the instructions of the Russian special services, it organized events to discredit the image of Ukraine in the international arena in order to worsen diplomatic relations with the United States and hamper Ukraine’s accession to the European Union and NATO,” the State Investigative Bureau said in a separate statement published on its website.

In January 2021, the United States imposed sanctions on several Ukrainian individuals and entities, including Dubinsky, accusing them of U.S. election interference and associating with a pro-Russian Ukrainian lawmaker linked to efforts by then-president Donald Trump’s allies to dig up dirt on President Joe Biden and his son.

Ukraine has launched a criminal investigation into the case.

Separately, a Ukrainian military officer is accused of allegedly coordinating last year’s attack on the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, according to The Washington Post, citing anonymous sources in Ukraine and Europe.

No one has taken responsibility for the September 2022 explosions, off the Danish island of Bornholm, that damaged three out of four offshore natural gas pipelines running under the Baltic Sea and delivering Russian gas to Europe.

The United States and NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, called it an act of sabotage, while Moscow said it was an act of international terrorism.

Roman Chervinsky, a decorated 48-year-old colonel who served in Ukraine’s special operations forces, was the “coordinator” of the Nord Stream operation, according to people familiar with his role, The Post reported Saturday.

Chervinsky, sources say, managed logistics and support for a six-person team that rented a sailboat under false identities and used deep-sea diving equipment to place explosive charges on the gas pipelines, The Post reported.

A spokesperson for Ukraine’s military told the Reuters news agency he had “no information” about the claim. The Ukrainian foreign ministry and Kyiv’s domestic security service, the SBU, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The newspaper also reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has denied Kyiv’s role in the blasts, had been unaware of the operation. Zelenskyy last week replaced the head of Ukraine’s special operations forces.

The Kremlin called the report alarming.

“It says that President Zelenskyy may not have been aware of such actions by his subordinates from the security agencies. This is a very alarming signal not only for us, but also for the countries of the collective West,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov told reporters, Monday.

In a statement to The Washington Post and Germany’s Der Spiegel, Chervinsky denied any involvement in the pipeline explosions. An outspoken critic of Zelenskyy’s administration, he claims the case against him is politically motivated.

Chervinsky is currently under arrest for attempting to convince a Russian pilot in 2022 to defect to Ukraine which investigators say led to a deadly Russian attack on a Ukrainian air base. Although he is accused of acting alone in this, his commanding officer at the time, Maj. Gen. Viktor Hanushchak, told Ukrainian media earlier this year that senior military leadership had signed off on the plot to lure the Russian pilot.

The Post and Der Spiegel collaborated on reporting and wrote separate stories that they agreed to publish at the same time.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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