Large Fire Burns at Crimea Fuel Depot After Suspected Drone Attack

NYT WORLD: Large Fire Burns at Crimea Fuel Depot After Suspected Drone Attack

By Marc Santora and Victoria Kim
Section: World
Source: New York Times
Published Date: April 29, 2023 at 03:00AM

A Russian-installed local official blamed the blaze on “enemy drones.” Ukraine, which typically maintains a policy of strategic ambiguity about strikes in Crimea, did not claim responsibility.

KYIV, Ukraine — A drone attack on a fuel depot in the city of Sevastopol in Russian-occupied Crimea set off an enormous fire early Saturday, a Russian official said, in the latest assault on a peninsula key to Moscow’s war effort. A thick cloud of black smoke darkened the skies above the port city, which is home to the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet. The Crimean Peninsula, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014 and has been heavily fortified in the years since, is critically important to Moscow’s control over occupied territories in southern and eastern Ukraine. It has increasingly become a target of attacks, though Ukraine typically maintains a policy of strategic ambiguity about strikes there. The Kremlin-appointed local governor, Mikhail Razvozhaev, urged local residents to remain calm as teams of firefighters battled a blaze that he said was caused by “enemy drones.” Ukrainian officials did not claim responsibility for Saturday’s blaze. “The main thing is that no one was hurt,” Mr. Razvozhaev told reporters at a news conference. “With the rest — we’ll figure it out.” Crimea was a key staging ground when President Vladimir V. Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago. The Russian leader visited Sevastopol last month to mark the ninth anniversary of Russia’s annexation, a defiant gesture just one day after an international court issued a warrant for his arrest. As Ukrainian officials say the country is in the final stages of preparation for a counteroffensive to take back territory seized by Russian forces, President Volodymyr Zelensky has maintained that Kyiv needs to reclaim control of Crimea in order to prevent future aggression by Moscow. He reiterated that position in an interview published on Saturday by the Finnish channel Yle, saying that the more weapons the West can provide to Ukraine, the faster the war will end. “We want to save as many lives as possible, so the number of weapons matters,” he said. Part of Ukraine’s argument in asking for longer-range missiles from its allies has been that it wants to be able to strike deeper behind Russian lines, including in Crimea. The Biden administration so far has held a hard line against doing so, fearing it could provoke the Kremlin. It is often unclear how Ukrainian forces are able to hit Russian targets in Crimea, but the attacks have become increasingly bold.

Read More at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/world/europe/russia-ukraine-war-crimea-fire.html

Suspected drone attack causes fire at Crimea fuel depot.  A suspected drone attack caused a fire at a fuel depot in Russian-occupied Crimea. There was no official claim of responsibility from Ukraine. Charlie D'Agata reports from Dnipro.