The head of the district, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said that a fire broke out on the territory of the Russian Defense Ministry in the Belgorod region of Russia bordering Ukraine.
“Data on casualties and destruction are being specified,” Gladkov wrote in the Telegram messenger.
The independent Russian website Mediazona reported that there were reports of plumes of smoke and explosions on social media. According to these reports, the police do not allow cars to enter the bridge over the Donets River.
General’s trip
Russian journalist Ruslan Leviev, founder of the journalistic group Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), said that aircraft from the Ministry of Defense and the Russian Guard were at Belgorod airport on Sunday.
The CIT group tweeted that the aircraft’s presence was due to a trip by Russian Chief of the General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov, who flew back to Moscow shortly after his arrival.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian media reports that Gerasimov was wounded and had to urgently evacuate from Izyum, where he was to command the Russian offensive.
Aleksey Arestovich, adviser to the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, confirmed on Sunday that two command posts of the Russian army had been destroyed near Izyum. According to preliminary data, the chief of staff of the airborne troops, General Andrei Simonov, was killed, but this information needs to be confirmed, Arestovich added.