Powerful explosions rocked a Russian air base in Crimea and sent plumes of smoke billowing over the countryside on Tuesday, in what could signal an escalation of the war in Ukraine. At least one person was killed and several others were injured, authorities said. Russia’s Defense Ministry denied that the Saki base in the Black Sea had been shelled, saying instead that a munition had exploded there. But Ukrainian social networks were abuzz with speculation that he was hit by Ukrainian long-range missiles. Videos posted on social media showed sunbathers on nearby beaches fleeing as huge flames and plumes of smoke billowed over the horizon from several locations, accompanied by loud booms. Crimea Today News reported on Telegram that witnesses reported a fire on the runway and damage to nearby houses from what it said were dozens of explosions.
Russia’s state news unidentified ministry source as saying the primary cause of the explosions appeared to be “violations of fire safety requirements.” The ministry said no warplanes were damaged. The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine sarcastically stated on Facebook: “The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine cannot determine the cause of the fire, but again reminds of the rules of fire safety and the ban on smoking in unspecified places.”
In his regular online interview, presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych cryptically said the explosions were either caused by a Ukrainian-made long-range weapon or were the work of guerrillas operating in Crimea. During the war, Russia reported numerous fires and explosions at ammunition depots on its territory near the Ukrainian border, blaming some of them on Ukrainian strikes. The Ukrainian authorities were mostly silent about the incidents.
If Ukrainian forces were in fact responsible for the blasts at the airbase, it would be the first known major attack on a Russian military base on the Crimean peninsula, which the Kremlin annexed in 2014. A smaller explosion last month at a Russian Black Sea Fleet headquarters in a Crimean port Sevastopol was accused of Ukrainian saboteurs using a makeshift drone. Russian warplanes used the Saki base to rapidly attack areas in southern Ukraine.One person was killed, Crimean regional leader Sergei Aksyonov said. Crimean health authorities said nine people were injured, one of whom remained hospitalized. The others were treated for cuts from shards of glass and released.
Moscow officials have long warned Ukraine that any attack on Crimea would trigger massive retaliation, including strikes on “decision-making centers” in Kiev. Ukraine’s president has vowed to return Crimea to Russia. “This Russian war against Ukraine and against all of free Europe began with Crimea and must end with Crimea – its liberation,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his late-night video address on Tuesday.
“Today it is impossible to say when that will happen. But we are constantly adding the necessary components to the formula for the liberation of Crimea.” Ukrainian officials said earlier on Tuesday that at least three Ukrainian civilians had been killed and 23 wounded by Russian shelling over a 24-hour period, including an attack near the Russian-occupied Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.
The Russians fired over 120 rockets from the power plant at the city of Nikopol across the Dnieper River, Dnipropetrovsk Governor Valentyn Reznichenko said. Several apartment buildings and industrial sites were damaged, he said. Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of shelling the plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, fueling international fears of a disaster. The governor of the region where the plant is located, Oleksandr Starukh, said on Tuesday that radiation levels were normal. But he warned that the accident could spread radiation no matter how the wind blows, and carry it to Moscow and other Russian cities.
A Russian official in the partially occupied Zaporizhia region said the factory’s air defense system would be strengthened after last week’s shelling. Yevgeny Balitsky, head of the Kremlin-backed administration, told Russian state television that power lines and other damaged parts of the plant had been restored.In recent weeks, Ukrainians have been launching counterattacks in Russian-occupied areas of southern Ukraine and trying to contain Kremlin forces in the industrial Donbas region in the east.
Also on Tuesday, a US official said Iran had agreed to supply drones to Russia for use in the war in Ukraine. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information, said that “over the past few weeks, Russian officials have been conducting training in Iran as part of an agreement to transfer UAVs from Iran to Russia.” In mid-July, the White House released satellite images showing that the Russians had visited an Iranian airbase to see weapons-capable drones. But U.S. officials said later that month that they had yet to see any evidence that Iran was supplying Russia with drones. Ukrainian officials said this month that Iran had handed over the drones to Russia and that some had been used in combat.
