MOSCOW: Hours after a Russian fuel storage facility caught fire near the Crimean port of Sevastopol early on Saturday, the city’s Moscow-installed governor accused Ukraine for the fire and said it was extinguished before a big tragedy happened.
According to a Ukrainian military intelligence officer, more than 10 oil tanks with a combined capacity of around 40,000 tonnes destined for the Russian Black Sea Fleet were destroyed, Reuters said.
The attack happened as Ukraine was getting ready to launch a long-promised counteroffensive to drive Russian soldiers out of the land they had occupied since their invasion in February 2022.
Control over all of its legal territory, including Crimea, is a crucial need, according to Ukraine, for any peace agreement. In 2014, Russian troops invaded the peninsula.
Moscow has charged Kyiv with unleashing swarms of drones to assault Crimea from the air and the sea.
Only one drone, according to Sevastopol governor Mikhail Razvozhaev, struck the oil tanks.
“The enemy… intended to take Sevastopol by unexpectedly as usual, by launching a sneak attack in the this morning,” Razvozhaev said on the Telegram app. He continued by saying that Russian firemen have demonstrated how to put out a large wildfire “and prevent a catastrophe.”
Although Ukraine lacks longer-range missiles that are capable of hitting targets in places like Sevastopol, it is working on developing drones to get around this problem.
Officials from Ukraine occasionally use euphemism language to celebrate explosions at military locations in Crimea, but they seldom take credit for them.
A military officer from Ukraine named Andriy Yusov refrained from claiming responsibility for the strike. Instead, he claimed to RBC that the explosion was “God’s punishment” for a Friday attack by Russia on the Ukrainian city of Uman that left 23 people dead.
“This penalty will endure a long time. It is preferable for everyone living in temporarily occupied Crimea to avoid being close to military installations and infrastructure that serve the aggressor’s army in the near future, Yusov was cited as saying by RBC.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the president of Ukraine, promised that Kyiv will do every effort to guarantee that those culpable for the assault on Uman were brought to justice as quickly as possible.
In a video speech that evening, he declared, “You were all terrorists and murderers and you have to be punished.”
The ongoing battle for the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, which has been the target of many Russian attacks that are gradually closing in on the centre, was not specifically mentioned by Zelenskiy.
