#Russia #munitions #exploded #Crimean #base #dead
Russia on Tuesday attributed loud explosions at a key military airfield on the Moscow-annexed Crimea peninsula to exploding munitions and downplayed the possibility that the site was hit by Ukrainian fire.
Dramatic amateur footage shared on social media appeared to show panicked holidaymakers fleeing a Crimean beach with young children as plumes of gray smoke billowed over the horizon.
The explosions rocked the Saki airfield on the 167th day of the Moscow invasion.
Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and used the region as a base for its attacks on Ukraine, but it has rarely been a target for Ukrainian forces.
The Russian Defense Ministry said “several aviation munitions” detonated at the base in an incident in which the head of the region said one person had been killed.
Local health officials previously said five people, including a child, were injured.
The Department of Defense said it was trying to find out the reason for the explosions but said the airfield was not the target of an attack.
There was no immediate reaction from Kyiv.
The Ukrainian army, which has been asking for long-range artillery from Western allies for months, has hit targets deeper into Russian-held territory since some began arriving in recent weeks.
Kyiv has also appropriated several acts of sabotage inside Russian territory.
Moscow seized Crimea from Ukraine in the wake of massive nationwide street demonstrations that ousted a pro-Kremlin president.
These protests led to fighting between the army and Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine that would lay the groundwork for Moscow’s all-out attack on February 24 this year.
The invasion has left thousands dead, displaced millions in Ukraine, and severely fractured economic ties between Russia and the West.
– Mandatory evacuations –
In response to economic sanctions against Moscow over the invasion, Russia has cut gas supplies to Europe.
It announced on Tuesday that its oil shipments through Ukraine had been halted.
Transneft, the Russian pipeline operator, said the Ukrainian side stopped the flow because it “receives no funding for these services.”
The Ukrainian side did not comment.
One of the affected countries, Slovakia, confirmed that supplies had been halted for several days, and a spokesman for Bratislava’s Slovnaft refinery called “technical problems at bank level related to the payment of transit fees by the Russian side”.
The Kremlin lashed out after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview that Europe should close its borders to Russians in response to the war.
The Ukrainian leader told the Washington Post that current Western sanctions against Moscow are too weak, in a call echoed by Russia’s neighbors Estonia and Finland.
“The irrationality of the thinking in this case is off the charts,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
On the front lines, Ukraine said Russia is pursuing a bombing campaign in the east of the country that has left much of the industrial Donbass region in ruins.
Kyiv said on Tuesday it had transported at least 3,000 people from the fighting-torn eastern Donetsk region since it ordered evacuations ahead of the winter.
Ukrainian authorities are urging people to vacate the area as they do not expect to be able to heat it during the cold winter months.
The presidency earlier said that three people were killed and 19 others injured in Russian shelling in the Donetsk region on Monday.
The head of the central Dnipro region, meanwhile, said 11 medical facilities had been transferred there from the more easterly Kharkiv and Lugansk regions.
“These facilities transported over 100 pieces of equipment and 10 ambulances,” said Dnipro regional governor Valentyn Reznichenko.
“Hospitals are starting to work again. They mainly take in displaced people.”
Social Tags:
#Russia #munitions #exploded #Crimean #base #dead
