“Air defense repelled a drone attack near the town of Jankoy, Crimeasaid the Russian Investigative Committee in a statement. ARIS MESSINIS / AFP
Russia says for its part that it repelled a Ukrainian drone attack in Crimea the day before.
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said on Tuesday that Russian Kalibr cruise missiles had been destroyed in annexed Crimea, a statement denied by Moscow, which said it had repelled a drone attack.
“An explosion in the town of Jankoy in the temporarily occupied northern Crimea destroyed Russian cruise missiles “Kalibr NK” when transported by rail“, indicated on Telegram the intelligence department of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. This source did not give more details or confirm the direct involvement of the Ukrainian army in these “destruction“.
Russian denial
The spokeswoman for the Southern Command of the Ukrainian army, Natalia Goumeniuk, quoted by the media, for her part recalled that kyiv considered it important to “hit the logistics» Russian to weaken his adversary while Djankoi is «a central point of interconnections» railways used for supplies to the Russian army. Russia has brushed aside these claims, swearing to have shot down Ukrainian drones in Crimea on Monday, a few days after a visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to this peninsula annexed in 2014 by Moscow.
Monday evening, “air defense repelled a drone attack near the city of Jankoy“said in a press release the Russian Investigation Committee, the body responsible for the most important investigations. “The targets of all downed drones were civilian infrastructure“, he assured. The governor installed by Moscow in Crimea, Sergei Aksionov, reported a person injured by the fall of debris from a drone shot down on a house and a store. An adviser to Sergei Aksionov, Oleg Kryuchkov, for his part accused the Ukrainian authorities of having carried out this attack to “get revengeof the annexation of Crimea by Moscow, a few days after his ninth birthday.
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On Saturday, to mark this anniversary, Vladimir Putin made a surprise trip to Crimea. He notably visited the Russian base in Sevastopol, the home port of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. In the process, the Russian president went to Mariupol, a Ukrainian port city conquered by Russian forces after a siege which reduced a large part of this city to ruins.
Since the launch of Moscow’s offensive against Ukraine in February 2022, Crimea has repeatedly been the target of drone attacks. At the beginning of March, Russia had thus claimed to have repelled a “massive attackof Ukrainian drones, reporting ten aircraft shot down. Russia has a military base in the Jankoy region. In August 2022, this base was devastated by the explosion of an ammunition depot. Moscow had ended up admitting asabotage“.
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