2 injured, 5 missing following Ukraine patrol boat blast
A blast has torn through a Ukrainian coastguard vessel off the strategic port city of Mariupol, injuring two of seven border guards on board the patrol boat with the other five reported as missing.
Ukraine’s State Border Guard Service said on Sunday that the cutter "exploded for undisclosed reasons," noting that "information about the state of the other servicemen is still being established."
There were no immediate hints on whether the explosion was linked to continued fighting between government troops and pro-Russia forces in eastern Ukraine despite a February truce agreement.
The eastern outskirts of the strategic Sea of Azov port, most of which under government forces control, has come under attack by pro-Russia forces in eastern Ukraine for weeks in response to intermittent shelling by Kiev troops.
Mariupol is a key coastal city between mainland Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, which joined Russia following a 2014 referendum that overwhelmingly approved the move.
Fighting between the pro-Russia forces and government troops near Mariupol has been continuing for months, despite the ceasefire deal agreed on by the rival sides as part of the Minsk agreement in February.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was quoted as saying in an interview on Saturday that the Ukrainian conflict was deliberately fabricated by “unprofessional actions” of Kiev’s Western sponsors.
"I believe that this (Ukraine) crisis was created deliberately and it is the result of our partner’s unprofessional actions," Putin said in a Saturday interview with Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera.
The remarks by the Russian president came amid counter-allegations by the West that the Kremlin has been meddling in Ukraine’s domestic affairs and backing fighters in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, where Kiev initiated a military operation in April 2014 against pro-Russia forces.
The Ukrainian crisis began in 2014 when pro- European Union (EU) forces, including Western-backed radical nationalists, ousted then Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, after he refused to sign an Association Agreement with the EU.
According to UN figures, the hostilities in Ukraine have so far left at least 6,417 people dead and 15,962 wounded.
MFB/KA/SS
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