https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/07/31/world/ukraine-russia-news-war/russia-accuses-ukraine-of-conducting-a-drone-attack-on-the-crimean-base-of-its-black-sea-fleet?smid=url-share
Russia accuses Ukraine of conducting a drone attack on the Crimean base of its Black Sea Fleet.
Russian authorities on Sunday accused the Ukrainians of conducting a drone attack against the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet in the port city of Sevastopol in Crimea, injuring six people and forcing authorities to cancel celebrations to honor the Russian Navy.
Ukraine denied that it was behind the strike, which took place just as ceremonies for Navy Day — one of the main celebrations of the year in Sevastopol — were about to get underway.
A strike at a target at the heart of the Russian military industrial machine on a day meant for celebration had deep symbolic resonance even if the damage from what Russian authorities described as a makeshift drone was minimal.
The city of Sevastopol — annexed by Russia with the rest of Crimea in 2014 — carries an outsize symbolic value for the Russian state with its Black Sea Fleet and two famous sieges it suffered in the 19th century and during the Nazi invasion.
The Ukrainian Air Force and Navy, in a joint statement, said the decision to cancel the Navy Day celebrations was a reflection of the growing concern over Ukraine’s ability to hit targets with precision from great distances and not the drone attack.
While dismissing the Russian claim that it was behind Sunday’s strike, the Ukrainian military said Russian military facilities inside Crimea are legitimate targets.
“We do not launch strikes on the territory of the Russian Federation,” it said. “Crimea is Ukraine.”
Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Odesa military region, dismissed the allegation that Kyiv was behind the strike as “sheer provocation.”
“Our liberation of Crimea from the occupiers will be carried out in another way and much more effectively,” he wrote on Telegram.
But Ukraine has actively encouraged insurgents living in occupied areas — including Crimea — to attack and disrupt Russia’s military campaign in any way they can.
While Ukraine and much of the world do not recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea, any military attacks there would represent a broadening of the already sprawling conflict.
Speaking before a Navy parade in St. Petersburg, President Vladimir V. Putin said Russia would defend what it sees as its national interests on all corners of the planet and announced that new hypersonic cruise missiles would soon be deployed that he claimed could evade “all obstacles.” Hypersonics, generally defined as weapons capable of flying at five times the speed of sound, are at the center of an arms race among the United States, Russia and China.
Mikhail Razvozhayev, Sevastopol’s governor, said in a statement that an explosion occurred early in the morning on Sunday in the courtyard of the fleet’s building in the city center. He ordered the cancellation of the Navy Day parade and urged residents to stay home.
In a statement, the Black Sea Fleet said people were injured by shattered glass from the explosion, according to Tass, a Russian state news agency. Pictures from the scene, posted by the governor, showed little damage to the building.
Russian military bloggers doubted the attack could have been launched from territory controlled by Ukraine, saying that a drone would not be able to fly so far. Boris Rozhin, who writes a popular blog on Telegram, called it “a terrorist act” that could have been carried out from inside Crimea by Ukraine’s security agents.
— Ivan Nechepurenko
