In an incident that serves as an example of how badly the conquest of Ukraine has gone for Vladimir Putin, a Russian bomber has dropped its payload into the centre of a Russian city.
The blast late on Thursday rocked Belgorod, near the Ukraine border, leaving a large crater and three people injured.
The Russian defence ministry acknowledged the weapon was accidentally released by one of its Su-34 bombers.
Seventeen apartment buildings had to be evacuated after an explosive device was found in the rubble left by the original explosion, authorities said.
The ministry said an investigation was underway but did not elaborate on the details of the weapon, which military experts said likely was a powerful 500-kilogram bomb.
The governor of Belgorod province, Vyacheslav Gladkov, reported on Saturday that sappers examining the site of Thursday’s blast found and decided to detonate what he called an “explosive object” that was “in the immediate vicinity of residential buildings.”
The precautionary evacuations ended later in the day, according to Belgorod Mayor Valentin Demidov.
“The bomb was removed from the residential area. Residents are being delivered back to their homes,” Demidov wrote on Telegram.
Belgorod, located about 40 kilometres east of the Russia-Ukraine border, has faced regular drone attacks since Russia sent troops into Ukraine last year. Russian authorities have blamed those strikes on the Ukrainian military, which refrained from directly claiming responsibility for the attacks.
Late Saturday, the governor of the Kharkiv region, Oleh Syniehubov, said five missiles fired from the Belgorod area hit the region, including one that struck unspecified “civilian infrastructure” in the capital city Kharkiv.
Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has sent relations with the West into deep freeze, with frequent expulsions of diplomats on both sides.
On Saturday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that German authorities had “decided on another mass expulsion of employees of Russian diplomatic missions in Germany.”
A ministry statement said that “as a reaction to the hostile actions of Berlin,” Russia decided to “mirror” the expulsions by Germany and “significantly limit” the maximum number of staff at German diplomatic missions in Russia.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Russia is expelling more than 20 German diplomats, Russian state media reported, but didn’t give a precise number.
-AAP
