A gas depot within the port metropolis of Sevastopol in Russian-occupied Crimea was engulfed in an infinite fireplace early Saturday, which an area Kremlin-appointed official stated was attributable to a drone strike.
Town on the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014, is dwelling to the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet and is vital to its dominance within the sea. Preliminary info indicated that the fireplace was attributable to a drone, the Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhaev, wrote on the Telegram messaging app. He didn’t say who may need been behind an assault.
Russian officers have blamed Ukrainian forces for repeated drone strikes on Sevastopol, on the peninsula’s southwestern tip. Ukraine sometimes maintains a coverage of strategic ambiguity about strikes in Crimea.
Pictures and video footage posted on-line, together with by the governor, confirmed a column of darkish smoke spewing into the sky and spreading throughout the encompassing areas.
The hearth at Kazachya Bay was burning an space of about 10,000 sq. toes, Mr. Razvozhaev stated. He stated that there have been no casualties and that no civilian buildings had been threatened, however that the blaze was troublesome to include due to the massive quantity of gas that was burning.
The Crimean Peninsula has been a staging floor for different assaults and an more and more engaging goal for Ukraine — particularly within the run-up to a extensively anticipated counteroffensive.
Whereas the small print of that marketing campaign are a carefully guarded secret, army analysts predict that Ukraine is likely to be trying to drive a wedge by Russian-occupied territory alongside the southern coasts of the Black and Azov Seas, close to Crimea.
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Uman assault: Rescuers had been nonetheless combing the rubble within the central Ukrainian metropolis of Uman on Saturday after a Russian strike there a day earlier killed 23 individuals, together with 5 youngsters. Officers stated that the rescue operation had been occurring for greater than 30 hours.
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Russian shelling: In Ukraine’s southern Kherson area, shelling within the city of Bilozerka hit a hospital and several other personal properties, killing a 57-year-old girl in her own residence and injuring three extra individuals, the regional army administration stated on Friday night.
