KIEV, UKRAINE (Reuters) – Massive fires erupted at an oil depot in Crimea after two Ukrainian drones attacked it, a Russian-appointed official said on Saturday. Due to the expected Ukrainian counterattack.
Mikhail Razbodzaev, governor of the Crimean port city of Sevastopol, posted videos and photos of the blaze on his Telegram channel.
Razvozhayev said the fire in the city port was given the highest rank in terms of difficulty of extinguishing it. However, he reported that the open fire was contained.
Razvozhayev said the oil depot was hit by “two enemy drones” and four oil tanks were burned. According to Moscow-appointed governor of Crimea Sergei Aksyonov, a third drone was shot down from the sky and another was neutralized by radio-electronic means.
Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, a move considered illegal around the world. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview this week that his country would try to retake the peninsula in the next counteroffensive.
Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Crimea last month to mark the ninth anniversary of Ukraine’s annexation of the Black Sea Peninsula. Putin’s visit came a day after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian leader and accused him of war crimes. The attack, reported in Sevastopol, comes a day after Russia fired more than 20 cruise missiles and two drones in Ukraine, killing at least 23 people. Two rockets hit an apartment building in the Uman city in central Ukraine, killing almost all the victims.
Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klimenko said on Saturday that six of his children were among the dead, adding that he had identified 22 of his 23 bodies recovered. According to Klimenko, two women remain missing.
Russian forces shot down more drones in Ukraine overnight. The Ukrainian Air Force Command said two Iranian Shahed suicide drones were intercepted and a reconnaissance drone shot down Saturday morning.
Razvozhayev said the fire at the oil depot would not cause casualties or interrupt fuel supplies in Sevastopol. The city has been subject to regular drone attacks, especially in recent weeks.
Earlier this week, Razvozhayev reported that Russian forces destroyed a Ukrainian maritime drone attempting to attack a port, and another exploded, breaking windows in several apartments but causing no further damage.
Andriy Yusov, spokesman for the Ukrainian Military Intelligence Service, told news agency RBC Ukraine on Saturday that the oil depot fire was “God’s punishment” for “civilians, including five children killed in Uman.”
He said more than a dozen of his tanks containing petroleum products destined for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet were destroyed in Sevastopol, but did not acknowledge Ukraine’s responsibility for the drone attack. The difference in the number of tanks given by Yusov and Razvozhayev was not immediately leveled.
Even after previous attacks on Crimea, Kiev has openly denied responsibility, but stressed that the country has the right to strike any target in response to a Russian aggression.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian forces shelled the town of Nova Kakhovka, while Moscow-based authorities shelled Russian-held areas of Kherson Oblast in southern Ukraine. “Artillery fire” caused a power outage in the city, officials said.
The Ukrainian-controlled part of the province was also set on fire on Saturday. The Kherson Public Prosecutor’s Office said one person was killed and another wounded in a Russian artillery shelling in the village of Birozerka.
