Explosions rang out in the village of Vesele near the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol in the Zaporizhzhia region on the night from Thursday to Friday, the city’s exiled mayor Ivan Fedorov said on Ukrainian national television, quoting Ukranian Pravda and The Kyiv Independent.

According to Fedorov, Russian troops have moved equipment and personnel into the village over the past four days.

“The adversary tried to do this while mobile communications and the Internet were turned off in the village, so that our residents could not report anything to the Ukrainian Armed Forces and special services. But it was not possible to hide it (overturning of the equipment),” said Fedorov, who is currently in the territory controlled by Ukraine and is transmitting information from sources in Melitopol.

Earlier this week, explosions rang out near the airport in Melitopol, where, according to Fedorov, Russian troops were transporting “a significant part of their extremely important cargo” by helicopters.

“But in one night, all this cargo exploded. And it disappeared. And this situation has been sowing panic among the occupiers for the second week in a row,” the mayor added.

In Meltypol and other Russian-occupied Ukrainian cities where partisans operate, explosions targeting collaborators or apparently destroying Russian military equipment and personnel regularly occur.

Moscow usually blames Ukraine for such incidents, while Kyiv does not accept responsibility for the explosions.

The city of Melitopol, with a population of about 150,000 people, has been under occupation since the end of February 2022.

The city serves as a rail hub for Russian forces in southern Ukraine and is part of a land bridge connecting Russia with the Crimean peninsula, which was illegally annexed in 2014.

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