Key Points
- The Russian defence ministry said gunmen have shot dead 11 people at a Russian military training ground.
- Fifteen others were wounded, it said, in the shooting in the southwestern Belgorod region that borders Ukraine.
Eleven people have been shot dead at a Russian military training ground, the defence ministry says, in the latest blow to President Vladimir Putin's forces since the invasion of Ukraine.
RIA news agency cited the ministry as saying 15 other people were wounded in the shooting on Saturday in the southwestern Belgorod region that borders Ukraine when two men gunned down a group who had volunteered to take part in the war.
It said the two assailants - nationals from an unspecified former Soviet republic - had been shot dead.
The attack took place a week after , the peninsula annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014. Earlier in the war, Russia's flagship in the Black Sea blew up and sank.
"During a firearms training session with individuals who voluntarily expressed a desire to participate in the special military operation (against Ukraine), the terrorists opened fire with small arms on the personnel of the unit," RIA cited a defence ministry statement as saying.
A day earlier, Mr Putin said Russia should be finished in two weeks, promising an end to a divisive mobilisation that has seen hundreds of thousands of men summoned to fight in Ukraine and huge numbers flee the country.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday said Ukrainian troops were still holding the strategic eastern town of Bakhmut despite repeated Russian attacks while the situation in the larger Donbas region remained very difficult.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Source: AAP / ABACA/PA
Ukrainian forces and civilians are relying on Starlink internet service provided by Elon Musk's SpaceX rocket company. Mr Musk on Friday said he could no longer afford to fund the service but on Saturday said he would continue to do so.
Mr Zelenskyy said almost 65,000 Russians had been killed so far since the 24 February invasion, a figure far higher than Moscow's official 21 September estimate of 5,937 dead. In August the Pentagon said Russia has suffered between 70,000 and 80,000 casualties, either killed or wounded.
Mr Putin ordered the mobilisation three weeks ago, part of a response to Russian battlefield defeats in Ukraine. He has also proclaimed the annexation of four partially occupied Ukrainian provinces and threatened to use nuclear weapons.
Mr Zelenskyy, speaking in an evening address, also said Russian missiles and drones had continued to hit Ukrainian cities, causing destruction and casualties.
Kyiv on Friday said it expected the United States and Germany to deliver sophisticated anti-aircraft systems this month to help defend against the missiles.
Fighting is particularly intense in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk provinces bordering Russia. Together they make up the larger industrial Donbas, which Moscow has yet to fully capture.
Russian forces have repeatedly tried to seize Bakhmut, which sits on a main road leading to the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. Both are situated in the Donetsk region.
Separately, the Ukrainian armed forces' general staff said in a Facebook post that troops had on Saturday repelled a total of 11 separate Russian attacks near Kramatorsk, Bakhmut and the town of Avdiivka, just to the north of Donetsk.
