Crimea bridge traffic halted after attack

Russian and Belarusian leaders meet as Ukraine accused of firing cluster bombs

A drone attack on an ammunition depot in Crimea prompted authorities to evacuate an area within a radius of 5 kilometers and briefly suspend road traffic on the bridge linking the peninsula to Russia on Saturday, a day after Russian officials accused Ukraine of firing cluster munitions at a village near the border.

Ukraine said its army had destroyed an oil depot and Russian army warehouses in central Crimea.

The attack caused an ammunition depot to explode, said Governor Sergey Aksyonov, adding that there was no reported damage or casualties.

In a video shown by state media, a thick cloud of gray smoke could be seen at the site. Aksyonov ordered people living within 5 kilometers of the zone to be evacuated.

"To minimize risks, it was also decided to halt rail traffic on Crimean railways," Aksyonov said.

The brief halt to traffic on the Crimea bridge, about 180 km to the east of the drone attack, came five days after explosions there killed two people and damaged a section of roadway, the second major attack on the bridge since the start of the special military operation.

"The goal is to return Crimea," Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said, according to a transcript published by his office on Saturday of a speech addressing the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado on Friday.

Kyiv considers the Crimea bridge, opened by Russia's President Vladimir Putin in 2018, as an "enemy object" and says it wants it to be "neutralized".

Russia said on Sunday it hit all intended targets in Ukraine's port city Odesa, claiming the sites were being used to prepare "terrorist acts" against Russia.

"At night the armed forces of the Russian Federation carried out a strike … on facilities where terrorist acts against the Russian Federation using unmanned boats were prepared," the Russian army said.

The historic Transfiguration Cathedral, a landmark Orthodox cathedral in the city, was damaged, media reported.

Zelensky promised to strike back.

It came as Putin met Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Sunday, for the first time since the latter helped broker a deal to end a mutiny by Wagner fighters last month.

'Strategic partnership'

Lukashenko paid a working visit to Russia and will talk to Putin about further development of the countries' "strategic partnership", the Kremlin said.

A video posted on Sunday by Lukashenko's press service showed the two leaders arriving at Saint Petersburg's Konstantinovsky palace together before scheduled talks.

The governor of Russia's Belgorod region Vyacheslav Gladkov has said Ukraine fired cluster munitions at a village near the Ukrainian border on Friday, but that there were no casualties or damage.

"In Belgorod district, 21 artillery shells and three cluster munitions from a multiple-launch rocket system were fired at the village of Zhuravlevka," Gladkov said on Saturday.

Ukraine received cluster bombs from the US this month, but it has said it will use them only to dislodge concentrations of enemy soldiers.

Belgorod, bordering Ukraine, has been repeatedly targeted by what Russia says is indiscriminate shelling by Ukraine's armed forces.

It was the first time Russia had reported the weapons being used on its territory. Putin has said Moscow has enough cluster munitions to respond if Ukraine uses the weapons.

Ukraine does not claim responsibility for attacks inside Russian territory and denied it was involved in the cross-border raids.

Russia also alleged that Kyiv had used cluster munitions on settlements in the Zaporizhzhia region and that they had killed one of its journalists and injured three.

Russia's Defense Ministry said a reporter, Rostislav Zhuravlev, "died from his wounds that resulted from the cluster munitions exploding "during the evacuation.

"Other reporters' conditions are medium, stable," the ministry said.

The death of a Russian journalist in Ukraine was "a heinous, premeditated crime" committed by Western powers and Kyiv, Russia's Foreign Ministry said on Saturday, and it said there would be a "response "against those responsible.

Agencies contributed to this story.