Explosions shake a military air base in Crimea
Johnathan Parker |
August 10, 2022 |
6:33 pm
Explosions shake a military air base in Crimea
On Tuesday, several large explosions shook an air base in the Russian-occupied Crimea. While the Moscow Defense Ministry claimed no one was hurt, local authorities claimed at least one person was killed and numerous others were injured.
The Saki site experienced weapons explosions, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, which also highlighted that the installation had not been shelled.
According to the statement, which was reported by Russian news outlets, “Several munitions designed for aviation burst in a storage located on the property of the Saki military airfield, close to the community of Novofiodorovka.”
Long-range missiles fired from Ukraine were the subject of much conjecture on social media in that country, and Ukrainian military sources confirmed this. There has been no offical confirmation as yet.
Ukraine suggests that the explosions at the Russian base in Crimea were sabotage.
According to authorities, Tuesday’s powerful blasts at an aviation base in Russian-occupied Crimea resulted in at least one fatality and numerous injuries.
The Saki site experienced explosive explosions, according to the Russian defense ministry, but the facility was not shelled.
According to the statement, which was reported by Russian news outlets, “Several munitions designed for aviation burst in a storage located on the property of the Saki military airfield, close to the community of Novofiodorovka.”
Social media was ablaze with rumors that it had been struck by long-range missiles fired from Ukraine, but President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s adviser Mykhailo Podolyak suggested that the sequence of explosions may have been the work of Partisan saboteurs.
Partisan saboteurs are a reference to the self-organized antifascist resistance fighters of World War II, much like their Belarus Railroad Partisan counterparts.
Military specialists also hypothesized that a US-made ATACMS or as-yet-unidentified hypersonic missiles or surface-to-surface rockets could have been used in the strike.
Since the two nations are still thought to be in the process of negotiating their acquisition, it is unknown whether the Ukrainian army has any ATACMS launchers or the necessary ammo.
Breaking the rules of fire safety
Social media videos depicted beachgoers running away from a nearby beach as massive plumes of smoke from the explosions rose over the horizon.
According to an unnamed ministry official cited by the Russian state news service Tass, the explosions’ main cause looked to be a “violation of fire safety rules.” No warplanes, according to the government, were harmed.
The satirical statement from Ukraine’s defense ministry on Facebook read: “The Ministry of Defence of Ukraine cannot determine the cause of the fire, but reiterates the fire safety regulations and the ban on smoking in obscene places.”
Russia has recorded multiple explosions and fires at munitions storage facilities on its territory close to the Ukrainian border throughout the conflict, attributing some of them to Ukrainian airstrikes. The incidents have not received much attention from Ukrainian authorities.
The air base explosions, if they were caused by Ukrainian forces, would be the first significant attack on a Russian military facility on the Crimean Peninsula, which the Kremlin annexed in 2014.
The Saki base has been utilized by Russian airplanes to quickly attack locations in southern Ukraine.
A smaller explosion that occurred last month at the Black Sea Fleet headquarters in the Crimean town of Sevastopol was attributed to Ukrainian saboteurs using a homemade drone.
Sergei Aksyonov, the leader of Crimea who was installed by Moscow, said that ambulances and medical helicopters were brought to the Saki air base and that a five-kilometer perimeter around the site was locked off.
Moscow’s officials have long warned Kiev that any assault on Crimea would result in fierce retaliation, including attacks on Kyiv’s “decision-making centers.”
