Marjorie Taylor Greene Claims Ukraine Fired on Civilian Beach: What We Know

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested that reported deaths and injuries on a civilian beach in Sevastopol were caused by cluster munitions fired by Ukrainian forces.

The Georgia Republican, who has taken a hardline stance against U.S. supply of aid to Ukraine, reposted on X, formerly Twitter, following news that five people were reportedly killed after Russians intercepted a missile over the city of Sevastopol in the Russian-annexed Crimea peninsula on Sunday.

The Russian Ministry of Defense blamed the U.S. over the incident, referring to the attack as "a heinous terrorist crime," adding that there was "no doubt about the involvement of the United States in this sinister crime."

The Russian Defense Ministry said four of the U.S.-delivered Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missiles were shot down by air defense systems, but fragments from the fifth rocket led to casualties on the ground.

"Responsibility for the deliberate missile attack on the civilians of Sevastopol is borne above all by Washington, which supplied these weapons to Ukraine, and by the Kyiv regime, from whose territory this strike was carried out," the ministry said.

Following the news, Greene shared a post on X from user @amuse—who has previously published false claims about election fraud and the U.S. owning a biolab in Sudan—who said it was "fact" that the Ukrainian Armed Forces has used remotely piloted Global Hawk drones to "direct the fire of US-provided cluster bombs on Russian civilians in Sevastopol."

Greene reposted the claim and said: "This should not be happening. Imagine if Russia using a Russian satellite, fired cluster munitions on a Florida beach.

"The only border our American military should be defending is our own border and the constitution mandates the federal government to defend the states."

Greene's post may suggest that there were coordinated strikes on the beach in Sevastopol, where videos were filmed showing sunbathers running from the sounds of heavy striking noises.

Newsweek has contacted a media representative for Greene via email for comment.

Accounts of the incident say the deaths were caused by the interception of a missile overhead, not by a deliberate strike on the beach in particular.

A statement translated online from the Russian Ministry of Defense said: "Today at 12.15 a deliberate terrorist missile attack was carried out on the city of Sevastopol by five American ATACMS operational-tactical missiles equipped with cluster warheads.

"While repelling a missile attack by air defense forces on duty, four American ATACMS missiles were intercepted. The explosion of the fragmentation warhead of the fifth American missile in the air led to numerous casualties among civilians in Sevastopol."

The Defense Ministry nonetheless categorized the incident as a "deliberate missile attack on civilians in Sevastopol."

While Russian news releases have not explicitly said that the beach was targeted as part of the strikes, it has repeated that the attack was against the civilian population, not strategic targets.

Russia's outcry over the targeting of civilian areas does not mention intelligence claiming it has been deliberately placing military targets close to civilian populations. Following Sunday's attack, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said that Russia has "irresponsibly encouraged Russian tourism to occupied Crimea during wartime while the Russian military continues to leverage the occupied peninsula as a rear staging area" and "purposefully stations legitimate military targets nearby civilian areas in Crimea in an effort to deter Ukrainian strikes."

The ISW quoted Ukrainian Mariupol Mayoral Advisor Petro Andryushchenko, who claimed that the Russian occupation government was at fault, saying it had failed to warn citizens before its air defenses shot down the missiles.

What has U.S. said in response?

At a press conference on Monday, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that while the U.S. lamented the loss of civilian life, and acknowledged it provided weapons to defend sovereign territory from "armed aggression," including in Crimea, "Russia could stop this war today and end the suffering caused by the war Russia launched today if it would stop its occupation of sovereign Ukrainian territory and stop launching attacks on civilians."

Pentagon spokesperson Major Charlie Dietz also said on Monday that "Ukraine makes its own targeting decisions and conducts its own military operations."

A United Nations statement on June 18 said that since Russia's invasion on February 24, 2022, 11,126 Ukrainian civilians have been killed and 21,863 injured. In that same period, Russian authorities say at least 91 civilians were killed and 455 injured in the Russian Federation, primarily in Belgorod, Briansk and Kursk regions bordering Ukraine.

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