Ammo dump exploded
Ukraine claims responsibility for Crimean attack
07/22/2023, 9:45 p.m
Another ammunition dump in Crimea is on fire. A Ukrainian army source confirmed hours later that Ukraine was behind the drone strike.
Ukraine has confirmed an attack on Russia’s annexed Crimea. The attack was aimed at “military installations” and was carried out by the Ukrainian armed forces, a source inside the Ukrainian army said. No further details about the attack were given by this source.
Crimea governor Sergey Aksyonov, appointed by Moscow, had previously announced that an ammunition dump had exploded as a result of a Ukrainian drone attack. After that, in the Krasnogvardeyskoye region in Crimea, an evacuation within a five-kilometer radius of the camp was decided.
Nobody was injured in the drone attack, Aksjonov said in the online service Telegram. However, the Russian-installed Crimean Ministry of Health later said four people had been hospitalized. The ministry did not provide any information about the nature of their injuries.
Train traffic interrupted
According to Aksyonov, after the attack, train services in Crimea were suspended as a precaution. Two trains running between Moscow and Simferopol, the largest city in Crimea, were stopped. The train service was later resumed, as the governor announced.
The 19-kilometer bridge from the Russian mainland to Crimea was damaged by an attack earlier this week. Two people died as a result. Two days later, a large ammunition depot caught fire in the south-eastern part of the peninsula.
At the beginning of June, the Ukrainian army launched a counter-offensive to recapture areas occupied by Russia – with the aim, among other things, of regaining control of Crimea, which Russia had annexed in 2014. In a video broadcast at a security forum in the US city of Aspen on Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated the goal of recapturing “all of Crimea”.