The president of Ukraine’s adviser also suggested that the explosions on Tuesday may have been the result of Russian incompetence. The Crimean health department, which Russia has taken over, says that they hurt eight civilians and killed one.
A top Ukrainian official said that a series of explosions at a Russian air base in Crimea could have been caused by partisan saboteurs, even though Kyiv denied having anything to do with the incident, which happened deep inside Russian-controlled territory.
The adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky also said that the blasts on Tuesday could have been caused by Russian incompetence. According to the health department in the part of Crimea that Russia took over, they killed one civilian and hurt eight others.
Videos posted on social media from Crimea, where many Russians go on vacation, showed huge clouds of smoke. In 2014, Russia took the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine. In February of that year, it was one of the places from which Russia invaded Ukraine.
When the online TV channel Dozhd asked Mykhailo Podolyak if KKyivwas to blame, he said: “Of course not.” What does this matter to us?
“People who live under occupation know that the occupation is coming to an end,” Podolak said.
Moscow said that the explosions, which were seen to happen at least 12 times, were caused by exploding ammunition and not by an attack.
Zelensky didn’t talk about the blasts directly in his daily video message on Tuesday, but he did say that it was good that people were paying attention to Crimea.
We will never give it up. He said the Black Sea area can’t be safe as long as Crimea is occupied, repeating the position of his government that Crimea must be given back to Ukraine.
“Fire safety rules were not followed.”
Videos shared on social networks showed sunbathers running away from a nearby beach as huge clouds of smoke from the explosions rose over the horizon.
A ministry source who did not want to be named told Russia’s state news agency Tass that the main cause of the explosions seemed to be a “violation of fire safety requirements.” The Ministry of Defense said that no warplanes were hurt.
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Sarcastically, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said on Facebook, “The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine can’t figure out what caused the fire, but it wants to remind everyone again about fire safety rules and the fact that you can’t smoke in unspecified places.”
During the war, Russia has said that there have been a lot of fires and explosions at munitions storage sites near the Ukrainian border. Some of these were caused by Ukrainian strikes, Russia says. Most of the time, the Ukrainian government hasn’t said much about the events.
If the explosions at the air base were caused by Ukrainian forces, it would be the first known major attack on a Russian military site on the Crimean Peninsula, which the Kremlin took over in 2014.
Russian warplanes have used the Saki base to attack quickly in the south of Ukraine.
Last month, a small explosion at the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in the Crimean port of Sevastopol was blamed on Ukrainian saboteurs who used a homemade drone.
Sergei Aksyonov, who was put in charge of Crimea by Moscow, said that ambulances and medical helicopters were sent to the Saki air base and that the area around it was closed off.
Moscow has been warning Ukraine for a long time that any attack on Crimea would lead to massive retaliation, including attacks on “decision-making centers” in Kyiv.
Nuclear RISK
There were still worries about the situation at the Russian-occupied nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, which is in the south of Ukraine. Each side has been accusing the other of shelling in the past few days.
In an interview with Reuters, Petro Kotin, the head of Ukraine’s state nuclear power firm Energoatom, said that it was very important for the Kyiv government to get back in charge of the plant before winter.
He said that three lines that connect the plant to the Ukrainian grid were damaged by the Russian shelling last week. Kotin said that Russia wanted to connect the plant to its power grid.
He said that it was “very likely” that shells would hit containers that held radioactive material.
Both Ukraine and Russia have said that they want experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, to visit Zaporizhzhia, which has the largest nuclear power plant in Europe.
Diplomats say that Russia has asked Rafael Grossi, the head of the IAEA, to talk to the U.N. Security Council on Thursday about Moscow’s claims that the Ukrainian military attacked the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and about the terrible things that could happen as a result.
Russia says that Ukraine attacked the plant, but Ukraine says that is not true.
On Tuesday, 15 bodies were buried in the northern town of Bucha. They were found four months after Russian forces left the area.
Deputy Mayor Mykhailyna Skoryk told reporters, “All of the people who were shot and buried in a mass grave had signs of torture on them.”
After starting its invasion on Feb. 24, Ukraine and its allies say that Russian forces have done terrible things in Bucha, a town near the capital, Kyiv. Russia said that the claim was false.
Ukraine and its allies say that what Moscow calls a “special military operation” is an unprovoked imperial-style war of aggression, and they are counting on high-tech rocket and artillery systems from the West to hurt Russian supply lines and logistics.
On Tuesday, U.S. President Joe Biden signed documents that show Washington’s support for Finland and Sweden joining NATO. This is the biggest expansion of the military alliance since the 1990s. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine made this happen.
