May 7 – Ukrainian troops attacked an oil storage depot on the outskirts of the Russian-controlled city of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday night and started a fire that injured five people, the Russian-appointed leader of the eastern Ukraine region said.
“Late in the night, the enemy attacked the peaceful city of Luhansk and shelled an oil storage depot on the edge of the city,” Chairman of the Luhansk People’s Republic Leonid Paschnik wrote on Telegram.
He later reported that five employees at the warehouse were taken to the hospital. All troops from the local department of Russia’s Emergencies Ministry were deployed to extinguish the fire and ensure the safety of nearby buildings.
Pasechnik suggested, without providing any evidence, that the attack was carried out by ATACM provided by the United States.
“The fire intensified efforts to provide medical assistance to the injured,” he wrote.
Ukraine has not issued an official statement on the incident.
Video posted on a Russian-Ukrainian war blogger website showed a fire breaking out some distance from the apartment building.
Ukrainian war bloggers reported on the attack, with one suggesting it was launched by a missile.
After Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014, Russian-backed and funded separatist militants took control of large swathes of eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
Before Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Pasechnik became the leader of the separatist region.
Russia annexed these two regions, as well as the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, in September 2022, but does not fully control any of them.
This article was generated from automated news agency feeds without modifications to the text.