A fuel tank in the port city of Sevastopol in Russian-occupied Crimea was engulfed in a massive fire early Saturday, which a local Kremlin-appointed official said was likely caused by a drone strike.
The city on the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014, is home to the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet and is important to its dominance in the sea. Preliminary information indicated that the fire was caused by a drone, the Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhaev, wrote on the Telegram messaging app. He did not say who might be behind an attack.
Russian officials have blamed Ukrainian forces for repeated drone strikes on Sevastopol, on the peninsula’s southwestern tip. Ukraine typically maintains a policy of strategic ambiguity about strikes in Crimea.
Photos and video posted online, including by the governor, showed a column of dark smoke spewing into the sky and spreading across the surrounding areas.
The fire at Kazachya Bay was burning an area of about 10,000 square feet, Mr. Razvozhaev said. He said that there were no casualties and that no civilian structures had been threatened, but that the blaze was difficult to contain because of the large volume of fuel that was burning.
A day earlier, Russian forces fired cruise missiles at cities across Ukraine, causing more than two dozen deaths, in the deadliest assault in months.
While most of the barrage was intercepted by air defenses, the ones that got through proved devastating. In the central city of Uman, an apartment building was reduced to rubble. At least 23 people died, among them young children who had been sleeping.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that it had used precision missiles in Friday’s attack, which achieved its goal. Ukrainian officials said the devastation of a city far from the front lines had been intended to sow terror across the country.
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Russian shelling: In Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, shelling in the town of Bilozerka hit a hospital and several private homes, killing one 57-year-old woman in her own home and injuring three more, the regional military administration said on Friday evening.
