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Passage from Dnieper to Black Sea rigged with mines by Ukrainian army, authorities say

From the Ukrainian side everything is mined and is being shelled, Kirill Stremousov specified

MOSCOW, May 24. /TASS/. The passage to the Dnieper-Bug estuary which connects the Dnieper River and the Black Sea has been mined by the Ukrainian side, Kirill Stremousov, Deputy Head of the Kherson region’s Military-Civilian Administration told TASS on Tuesday.

"The passage from Kherson’s port is not mined - the passage to the Dnieper-Bug estuary is rigged with mines. There, from the Ukrainian side everything is mined and is being shelled, this is closer to Ochakov in the Nikolaev region," the official said.

The Kherson region is in southern Ukraine bordering the Republic of Crimea.

In mid-March, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported that the Kherson region was completely controlled by Russian troops. At the end of April, the region formed a governing military-civilian administration. The authorities also expressed an intention to accede to Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a televised address on February 24 that in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation in order to protect people "who have been suffering from abuse and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years." The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories, noting that the operation was aimed at the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine.

Russia's Defense Ministry reported later that Russian troops were not delivering strikes against Ukrainian cities. It emphasized that Ukrainian military infrastructure was being destroyed by precision weapons.