The United States responded on June 24 to Russia’s claim that it was to blame for a deadly attack on Crimea on June 23 by pointing the finger back at Moscow for starting the war and by saying that the weapons it provides are for Ukraine to use to defend its territory against Russian aggression.
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The Russian Defense Ministry said that the June 23 strike near Sevastopol involved five longer-range missiles that the United States began supplying to Ukraine this year.
It also claimed that U.S. specialists had set the missiles’ flight coordinates based on information gathered from U.S. satellites.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller responded by saying it was not unusual for Moscow to make “ridiculous, hyperbolic claims about responsibility that aren’t borne out by fact.”
He noted that Russia initially blamed Washington for a terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall in March that killed more than 140 people and was later claimed by the extremist Islamic State group.
“We regret any civilian loss of life in this war. We provide weapons to Ukraine so it can defend its sovereign territory against armed aggression — that includes in Crimea which, of course, is part of Ukraine,” Miller told reporters. “Russia could stop this war today.”
Miller said the United States had no assessment on the attack on Crimea, which Russia said killed four people, including two children, and injured 151. Moscow claimed it was carried out by U.S.-supplied Army Tactical Missile Systems, known as ATACMS, loaded with a cluster warhead.
Pentagon spokesman Major Charlie Dietz said that Ukraine “makes its own targeting decisions and conducts its own military operations.”
Russia summoned U.S. Ambassador Lynne Tracy to the Foreign Ministry earlier on June 24 to face accusations that Washington was “waging a hybrid war against Russia and has actually become a party to the conflict” and was told that the attack would not go unpunished.
“Of course, the involvement of the United States in the fighting, as a result of which peaceful Russians are dying, cannot but have consequences,” Peskov said. “Which ones exactly — time will tell.”
While he declined to provide specifics, Peskov cited Russian President Vladimir Putin’s comments on June 6 about supplying conventional weapons to regions near to the United States and near U.S. allies.
Putin also has said that Russia might supply weapons to North Korea, suggesting this would be a mirror response to the West supplying military arms and equipment to help Ukraine defend itself in the full-scale invasion that Russia launched in February 2022. Since the start of the invasion, Russian attacks have killed more than 11,000 Ukrainian civilians, according to the United Nations.
While the Russian Defense Ministry said four people died in the attack on Crimea when they were hit by falling debris from the missiles, Sevastopol’s Russian-appointed governor, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said that five people were killed.
Video footage aired by Russian media and posted on social media showed vacationers running to safety and injured people being evacuated from a beach said to be on the north side of the city, which is a popular tourist destination and home to the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
Russia seized and illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and installed a local government, although the territory is still officially part of Ukraine.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Kyiv has vowed to restore control of its territory and has targeted key Russian military and naval installations in Crimea.
The attack came as Russia continues to pound Ukrainian energy infrastructure and strike the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, near the border with Russia.
At least two people were killed and more than 50 were injured on June 22 when an apartment building was struck by a Russian bomb. On June 23, the air strikes on the city continued, killing one person.
Russian forces also attacked Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region on June 24, killing at least four people and injuring 34. Regional Governor Vadym Filashkin said that two Iskander-M missiles destroyed a home and damaged 16 others in the town of Pokrovsk.
Russian military bloggers sharply criticized the Russian Defense Ministry and occupying authorities in Crimea following the missile strike near Sevastopol, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
In a June 23 report, the ISW said that “Russian sources criticized Russian authorities for not using air-raid sirens to alert civilians to seek shelter.”
The U.S. think tank also said that Russian authorities were criticized for “failing to detect and destroy all the missiles before they approached Sevastopol.”
Ukraine has in recent months stepped up attacks against Russian forces in Crimea, which Russia has militarized since annexing it in 2014. There are more than 200 Russian military sites on Crimea, including air bases, naval installations, training grounds, air defense and rocket forces, as well as signals and communications facilities.
The Kremlin has been promoting Crimea as a tourist destination despite the danger of attacks. Crimean officials have organized festivals and concerts this summer as the peninsula is heavily dependent on tourism to sustain its economy. The Kremlin and Russian businessmen have poured tens of billions of dollars into infrastructure, hotels, and real estate since 2014.
Tourists who go there have been told to heed official warnings, like air alarms. At the same time, Ukrainian authorities have been warning Russians since 2022 not to vacation in Crimea.