প্রকাশ: 11/08/2022
Ukraine said Wednesday that nine Russian warplanes were
destroyed in a deadly string of explosions at an air base in Crimea that
appeared to be the result of a Ukrainian attack, which would represent a
significant escalation in the war.
Russia denied any aircraft were damaged in Tuesday’s blasts
— or that any attack took place. But satellite photos clearly showed at least
seven fighter planes at the base had been blown up and others probably damaged.
Ukrainian officials stopped short of publicly claiming responsibility
for the explosions, while mocking Russia’s explanation that a careless smoker
might have caused ammunition at the Saki air base to catch fire and blow up.
Analysts also said that explanation doesn’t make sense and that the Ukrainians
could have used anti-ship missiles to strike the base.
If Ukrainian forces were, in fact, responsible for the
blasts, it would be the first known major attack on a Russian military site on
the Crimean Peninsula, which was seized from Ukraine by the Kremlin in 2014.
Russian warplanes have used Saki to strike areas in Ukraine’s south.
Crimea holds huge strategic and symbolic significance for
both sides. The Kremlin’s demand that Ukraine recognize Crimea as part of
Russia has been one of its key conditions for ending the fighting, while
Ukraine has vowed to drive the Russians from the peninsula and all other
occupied territories.
The explosions, which killed one person and wounded 14, sent
tourists fleeing in panic as plumes of smoke rose over the coastline nearby.
Video showed shattered windows and holes in the brickwork of some buildings.
One tourist, Natalia Lipovaya, said that “the earth was gone
from under my feet” after the powerful blasts. “I was so scared,” she said.
Sergey Milochinsky, a local resident, recalled hearing a
roar and seeing a mushroom cloud from his window. “Everything began to fall
around, collapse,” he said.
Crimea’s regional leader, Sergei Aksyonov, said some 250
residents were moved to temporary housing after dozens of apartment buildings
were damaged.
Russian authorities sought to downplay the explosions,
saying Wednesday that all hotels and beaches were unaffected on the peninsula,
which is a popular tourist destination for many Russians. But video posted on
social media showed long lines of slowly moving cars on the road to Russia as
tourists headed for home.
A Ukrainian presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych,
cryptically said that the blasts were either caused by Ukrainian-made
long-range weapons or the work of Ukrainian guerrillas operating in Crimea.
A Ukrainian parliament member, Oleksandr Zavitnevich, said
the airfield was rendered unusable. He reported on Facebook that it housed
fighter jets, tactical reconnaissance aircraft and military transport planes.
Satellite photos dated Wednesday issued by Planet Labs PBC
showed wreckage in spots on the airfield where the company’s photos a day
earlier showed numerous warplanes.
“Official Kyiv has kept mum about it, but unofficially the
military acknowledges that it was a Ukrainian strike,” Ukrainian military
analyst Oleh Zhdanov said.
The base is at least 200 kilometers (about 125 miles) from
the closest Ukrainian position. Zhdanov suggested that Ukrainian forces could
have struck it with Ukrainian or Western-supplied anti-ship missiles that have
the necessary range.
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said it
couldn’t independently determine what caused the explosions but noted that
simultaneous blasts in two places at the base probably rule out an accidental
fire but not sabotage or a missile attack.
But it added: “The Kremlin has little incentive to accuse
Ukraine of conducting strikes that caused the damage since such strikes would
demonstrate the ineffectiveness of Russian air defense systems.”
During the war, the Kremlin has reported numerous fires and
explosions on Russian territory near the Ukrainian border, blaming some of them
on Ukrainian strikes. Ukrainian authorities have mostly kept silent about the
incidents, preferring to keep the world guessing.
Neither side has released much information about their own
casualties. In his nightly video address Wednesday, Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed nearly 43,000 Russian soldiers had been killed.
Colin Kahl, U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy,
estimated Monday that Russian forces have sustained up to 80,000 deaths and
injuries in the fighting. He did not break down the figure with an estimate of
forces killed or provide a Ukrainian casualty count.
In other developments, Russian forces shelled areas across
Ukraine on Tuesday night into Wednesday, including the central region of Dnipropetrovsk,
where 13 people were killed, according to the region’s governor, Valentyn
Reznichenko.
Reznichenko said the Russians fired at the city of Marganets
and a nearby village. Dozens of residential buildings, two schools and several
administrative buildings were damaged.
“It was a terrible night,” Reznichenko said. “It’s very hard
to take bodies from under debris. We are facing a cruel enemy who engages in
daily terror against our cities and villages.”
In Ukraine’s east, where fighting has raged for eight years,
a Russian attack on the center of the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region
killed seven, wounded six and damaged stores, homes and apartment buildings,
setting off fires, Ukraine’s prosecutor general said on Telegram. Bakhmut is a
key target for Russian forces as they advance on regional hubs.
In the city of Donetsk, which has been under the control of
Russia-backed separatists since 2014, Ukrainian shelling hit a brewery, killing
one person and wounding two, the separatists’ emergency service said. It said
the shelling late Wednesday caused a leak of toxic ammonia and warned people to
stay inside and breathe through cotton gauze.
Two residents of the village of Staryi Saltiv in the Kharkiv
region in the northeast were killed Wednesday in Russian shelling, police
reported.
In the country’s southeast, Moscow’s forces continued
shelling the city of Nikopol across the Dnieper River from the Russian-occupied
Zaporizhzhia power station, the biggest nuclear plant in Europe. Ukraine and
Russia have accused each other of shelling it, stoking international fears of a
catastrophe.
On Wednesday, foreign ministers of the Group of Seven
industrialized democracies demanded that Russia immediately hand back full control
of the plant to Ukraine. They said they are “profoundly concerned” about the
risk of a nuclear accident with far-reaching consequences.
– AP/UNB
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