Blasts hit Russian base in Crimea, Ukraine targets supply lines
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[August 17, 2022]
By Natalia Zinets
KYIV (Reuters) -Russia blamed saboteurs for
explosions at one of its military bases in Moscow-annexed Crimea while
Ukraine hinted it was responsible as its officials said their strategy
was to destroy supply lines supporting Russia's invasion.
The blasts on Tuesday engulfed an ammunition depot at a military base in
the north of the Crimean peninsula, disrupting trains and forcing the
evacuation of 2,000 people from a village, according to Russian
officials and news agencies.
Plumes of smoke were later seen at a second Russian military base in
central Crimea, Russia's Kommersant newspaper said. The blasts and smoke
followed last week's explosions at a Russian military air base in
western Crimea that destroyed eight warplanes.
Russia's defence ministry said the explosions at the ammunition depot
were "a result of sabotage". The Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed
in 2014, is the main supply route for its forces in southern Ukraine and
the base for its Black Sea fleet.
Ukraine did not confirm or deny responsibility for the explosions though
its officials cheered Russia's setbacks.
Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak and chief of staff Andriy Yermak
both exulted on social media at "demilitarisation", an apparent mocking
reference to the word Russia uses to justify its invasion.
Podolyak told Britain's Guardian newspaper later that Ukraine's strategy
was to destroy Russian "logistics, supply lines and ammunition depots
and other objects of military infrastructure."
"It's creating a chaos within their own forces," he said.
As Ukraine considers a counter-offensive in the south, the explosions
raised the prospect of new dynamics in the six-month-old war if Ukraine
has capability to strike deeper in Russian-occupied territory or
pro-Ukraine groups are having success with guerrilla-style attacks.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged Ukrainians to steer clear of Russian
military bases and ammunition stores and said the explosions could have
various causes, including incompetence.
"But they all mean the same thing - the destruction of the occupiers'
logistics, their ammunition, military and other equipment, and command
posts, saves the lives of our people," he said in an evening address.
An electricity substation also caught fire in Tuesday's blasts,
according to footage on Russian state television. Seven trains were
delayed and rail traffic on part of the line in northern Crimea had been
suspended, Russia's RIA news agency said.
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of the eastern Donetsk region, which has
seen some of the fiercest fighting, said two civilians were killed and
seven were wounded in shelling by Russian forces in the past 24 hours.
The Ukrainian government has ordered mass evacuations in Donetsk but for
one couple on a small farm near the city of Kramatorsk leaving is not an
option.
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Buses for emergency evacuation are
parked on the roadside in Azovskoye settlement following an
explosion at a Russian military warehouse in the Dzhankoi district,
Crimea, August 16, 2022. REUTERS/Stringer
"Grandmother cannot be transported – she is almost 100 years old,"
Nataliia Ataiantz, 47, said as she checked on the elderly woman.
For her husband, Oleksandr, the idea of leaving is "scary".
"Our parents are buried here. And this is our land too ... where
should we go, to foreign country?" he said.
Attention has also focused in recent days on shelling near the
Zaporizhzhia nuclear reactor complex, Europe's largest, in a
Russian-occupied part of southeastern Ukraine.
Each side has blamed the other for heightened risks to the
Zaporizhzhia plant, which Russia seized in March, though Ukrainian
technicians continue to operate it.
The war has caused millions to flee, killed thousands and deepened a
geopolitical rift between the West and Russia, which calls its
invasion a "special military operation" to demilitarise its
neighbour and protect Russian-speaking communities.
Ukraine, which was part of the Russian-dominated Soviet Union until
its 1991 break-up, accuses Russia of waging an imperial-style war of
conquest.
Russia faced an initial flurry of U.N. denunciations for attacking
Ukraine. But wary of growing frustration and with no prospect of the
United Nations being able to end the war, some Western diplomats
have acknowledged they are limited in how they can significantly
further target Russia.
GRAIN EXPORT PROGRESS
There was further progress on a U.N.-brokered deal for Ukrainian
grain exports to resume, after a Russian blockade of Black Sea ports
had worsened a global food crisis.
With ports unblocked, the ship Brave Commander left the Ukrainian
port of Pivdennyi carrying the first cargo of food aid bound for
Africa from Ukraine since Russia's invasion.
The first ship to leave under the July deal, the Sierra
Leone-flagged Razoni, docked in the Syrian port city of Tartous.
Ukraine can export 3 million tonnes of grain from its ports in
September and may eventually be able to export 4 million tonnes
monthly, a government official said.
U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres will visit Odesa, Ukraine's
main Black Sea port, on Friday. He will meet Zelenskiy and President
Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, which helped engineer the grain accord, a
U.N. spokesman said.
(Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Cynthia Osterman, Lincoln
Feast; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Robert Birsel)
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