Russian Black Sea Fleet commander Viktor Sokolov has appeared at a meeting in footage released by the country’s defense ministry, a day after Ukraine claimed to have killed him in a missile strike.
The Russian defense ministry released the video and photos on Tuesday, showing Sokolov — one of Moscow’s most senior naval officers — taking part in a meeting of military leaders that was led by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
In the video, Sokolov appears on screen several times, without speaking.
Kiev claimed on Monday that its special forces had killed 34 officers including Sokolov in an unprecedented strike on the fleet’s naval headquarters in the Crimean peninsula last week.
After the video was released, Kiev said it was “clarifying the information.”
“Since the Russians were urgently forced to publish an answer with an apparently alive Sokolov, our units are clarifying the information. This is happening within the procedure for collecting data on the results of the operation,” the special operations forces said in a post on Telegram.
It said, “As is known, 34 officers were killed as a result of a missile attack on the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation. Available sources claim that the commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet was among the dead.”
Ukraine’s counteroffensive produced no results: Peskov
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also appears in the defense ministry video, saying that the Ukrainian counter-offensive had so far produced no results.
“The Ukrainian armed forces are suffering serious losses along the entire front line.”
Peskov said the United States and its Western allies “continue to arm the armed forces of Ukraine, and the Kiev regime throws untrained soldiers to their slaughter in senseless assaults.”
The administration of US President Joe Biden has supplied more than $43 billion worth of arms to Ukraine since Russia launched its “special military operation” in Ukraine in February last year.
Ukraine launched a counteroffensive in early June, asking for even more weapons to push south toward the Crimean Peninsula by the end of the year.
The US intelligence agencies warned last month that the counteroffensive would stall before reaching the key southeastern city of Melitopol
