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Crimea In Spotlight After Airfield Blasts, As Russians Focus On South And Ukrainians On Northeast [1]
['Rfe Rl']
Date: 2022-08
Speculation continued over the cause of major explosions at a Russian airfield in Crimea, while reports overnight on August 9-10 suggested Russian troops were concentrating on a southern region and Ukrainians reported minor successes around Kharkiv, in the northeast.
Meanwhile assessments of the fighting from Ukrainian and Western military sources indicate that battle lines have become increasingly entrenched as the five-month-old conflict grinds on, with advances mostly limited on either side.
Speaking in his nightly video address on August 9, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy avoided any specific reference to the dozen or so blasts that reportedly killed one person at the military airport in Crimea.
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But he vowed to reverse Moscow's 2014 annexation of the peninsula and to retake the it from Russia by the end of the war.
“This Russian war against Ukraine and against all of free Europe began with Crimea and must end with Crimea — its liberation,” Zelenskiy said. “Today it is impossible to say when this will happen. But we are constantly adding the necessary components to the formula for the liberation of Crimea.”
Crimea has so far escaped heavy fighting, and officials in Moscow have warned Ukraine that any attack there would trigger massive retaliation, including strikes on “decision-making centers” in Kyiv.
The Russian Defense Ministry indicated in a statement that the Saky airfield was not targeted in an attack and that the detonation of aviation ammunition caused the explosions, which reportedly killed one person, without clarifying who or what triggered the blasts.
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said it "cannot establish the cause of the fire, but once again reminds about the rules of fire safety and the prohibition of smoking in unspecified places," hinting at an accident at the facility.
But The New York Times quoted an unnamed "senior Ukrainian military official with knowledge of the situation" as saying that Ukrainian forces were behind the Crimea explosions.
It said the official declined to specify what type of weapon caused them but said "a device exclusively of Ukrainian manufacture was used."
The source also suggested that the Saky air base, on Crimea's western coast, was routinely used to launch air attacks on Ukrainian forces.
RFE/RL could not independently confirm the Times' reporting.
A Ukrainian military expert told Current Time that Kyiv "theoretically" has weapons that could have reached Saky.
Reports of fighting suggest that Russia is concentrating its main troop activities in the southern Kherson region, while the Ukrainians claimed to be making minor gains in the Kharkiv region.
Russian forces were said to have shelled the northeastern city of Kharkiv overnight on August 9-10, damaging infrastructure but causing no casualties.
Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said that at least four explosions had sounded through the night, including one near a building that "has nothing to do with military infrastructure."
The Ukrainian Army's General Staff said late on August 9 that "Russians continue to attempt to attack in different parts of the hundred-kilometer front in eastern Ukraine, from the outskirts of Seversk to the outskirts of Donetsk."
It cited Russian tactical offensives in Yakovlevka, Bakhmut, and Zaitsev, and said Ukrainian defenders had beat back an enemy offensive in Spornoye, near Seversk.
With reporting by RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, Current Time, and The New York Times
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[1] Url:
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-crimea-explosions-air-base/31981539.html
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