Russian tourists sun-baking in Crimea have had a small taste of what Ukrainians are enduring daily: running for their lives from a bomb blast.
Powerful explosions rocked a Moscow-run air base. At least nine people have been killed, according to Russian authorities.
“The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine would like to remind everyone that the presence of occupying troops on the territory of Ukrainian Crimea is not compatible with the high tourist season,” Ukrainian authorities wrote in a statement early Wednesday morning.
In his latest video, sent out to followers on Telegram, President Volodymyr Zelensky did not directly mention the explosions but addressed the long-running dispute over the occupied territory.
“This Russian war against Ukraine and against all of free Europe began with Crimea and must end with Crimea – its liberation,” Mr Zelensky said.
“Russia has turned our peninsula, which has always been and will continue to be one of the best places in Europe, into one of the most dangerous places.”
Russia has previously warned that it would retaliate to any attack on the peninsula by targeting political centres of Ukraine.
In other news out of Ukraine, 39 wagons filled with Australian coal have arrived at a thermal power plant in the country.
In total, Ukraine expects to receive 79,000 tons of coal from Australia.
Read on for the latest developing information on the situation in Crimea.
Bomb blasts rock Crimea
Ukraine has not claimed responsibility but an adviser to Ukraine’s President wrote on Twitter “this is just the beginning”.
“The future of the Crimea is to be a pearl of the Black Sea, a national park with unique nature and a world resort,” Mykhailo Podolyak said.
“Not a military base for terrorists. This is just the beginning.”
Ukraine’s deputy Prime Minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, wrote on her Telegram channel:
“Today is the International Day of Indigenous Peoples. In Ukraine. Crimean Tatars, Karaites and Krymchacks are considered to be such.
“And today’s explosions in Novofedorivka are another reminder of who Crimea belongs to. Because it is Ukraine”.
Taking the chance to troll the enemy, Ukrainian authorities issued a statement pointing out to fire rules and said no one should be smoking in unsettled territory.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said munitions blew up at the Saki base, and it emphasised that the installation had not been shelled.
But Ukrainian social networks were abuzz with speculation that it was hit by Ukrainian-fired long-range missiles.
Unverified video showed Ukrainian aircraft leaving the area and another, also unverified, purported to show pieces of a Russian aircraft damaged in the explosion.
Other video posted on social networks showed sunbathers fleeing a nearby beach as huge clouds of smoke from the explosions rose over the horizon.
Tweet from @mrsorokaa
If the base was, in fact, struck by the Ukrainians, it would mark the first known major attack on a Russian military site on the Crimean Peninsula – annexed by the Kremlin in 2014 – and a significant escalation of the conflict.
The headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in the Crimean port of Sevastopol was hit by a small-scale explosion delivered by a makeshift drone last month in an attack blamed on Ukrainian saboteurs.
Crimea’s head Sergei Aksyonov said ambulances and medical helicopters were sent to the Saki air base and the area was sealed off within a radius of 5km.
One person was killed, according to the regional leader of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov. Earlier, Konstantin Skorupsky, the head of Crimea’s health care department, reported five people were wounded, with one of them admitted to hospital and the others treated for cuts from shards of glass and released.
Officials in Moscow have long warned Ukraine that any attack on Crimea would trigger massive retaliation, including strikes on “decision-making centres” in Kyiv.
The Saki base was used by Russian warplanes to strike areas in Ukraine’s south on short notice.
Tweet from @KyivIndependent
Earlier on Tuesday, Ukrainian officials said that at least three Ukrainian civilians were killed and 23 wounded by Russian shelling in 24 hours, including an attack not far from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
The Russians fired over 120 rockets at the town of Nikopol, which is across the Dnieper River from the plant, Dnipropetrovsk Governor Valentyn Reznichenko said. Several apartment buildings and industrial sites were damaged, he said.
Ukraine and Russia have accused each other in recent days of shelling the power station, the biggest nuclear plant in Europe, stoking international fears of a catastrophe.
In his nightly video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky invoked the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine, which at the time was a Soviet republic. He called for new sanctions against Russia, accusing it of risking another nuclear disaster.
“We are actively informing the world about Russian nuclear blackmail,” he said.
The Kremlin claimed that Ukraine’s military was attacking the plant and urged Western powers to force Kyiv to stop.
A Russian-installed official in the partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region said an air defence system at the plant would be reinforced in the aftermath of last week’s shelling.
Evgeny Balitsky, head of the Kremlin-backed administration, told Russian state TV that power lines and other damaged portions of the plant were restored.
“The plant is operating normally but, of course, with an increased degree of security,” Mr Balitsky said.
The Ukrainians in recent weeks have been mounting counterattacks in Russian-occupied areas of southern Ukraine while also trying to hold off the Kremlin’s forces in the country’s industrial Donbas region in the east.
-with wires
