Multiple loud explosions have rocked a Russian military airfield in occupied Crimea:
Evidently the explosions shattered windows for a kilometer around.
No windows within 1 km of today’s Ukrainian missile strike on the Russian airbase in Crimea survived.
The Ukrainian Army has sent a powerful message to the Russian.
Crimea is now within reach. pic.twitter.com/OKkWxs7zRl
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) August 9, 2022
Russian military assets blowing up in Ukraine isn’t news, especially now that they’ve fielded HIMARS. What is news is these strikes are a good 200 kilometers from the front line.
As images of large explosions in Russian-occupied Crimea flashed across social media, the Russian Ministry of Defense on Tuesday claimed they were the result of “several aviation munitions destroyed” at the Russian Navy’s Saki Air Base near the village of Novofedorivka.
The incident occured [sic] about 3:20 p.m. local time, according to an official Ministry of Defense (MOD) statement.
Snip.
A senior Ukrainian military official with knowledge of the situation told The New York Times that Ukrainian forces were behind the explosion.
“This was an air base from which planes regularly took off for attacks against our forces in the southern theater,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters. The official would not tell the Times what type of weapon used in the attack, saying only that “a device exclusively of Ukrainian manufacture was used.”
A top Crimean official earlier on Tuesday confirmed there were several explosions in Novofedorivka.
“So far, I can only confirm the very fact of several explosions in the Novofedorivka area. I ask everyone to wait for official messages and not to produce versions. Oleg Kryuchkov, adviser to the head of Crimea, said on Tuesday on his Telegram channel.
Viktoria Kazmirova, deputy head of the administration of the Saki district, also reported explosions at the airfield, according to Russian state-run media outlet TASS.
“Our airfield is exploding. Explosions at the airfield. Here all the windows were broken,” Kazmirova said.
The regional health ministry “reported that ambulances and medical aviation were sent to the site of the explosions, information about the victims is being specified.”
Saki Air Base, which Russia occupied when it took over Crimea in 2014, is home to the Russian Navy’s 43rd Independent Naval Attack Aviation Regiment (43 OMShAP). This regiment flies 12 Su-30SMs, six Su-24Ms, and six Su-24MRs, and came to prominence during several encounters with NATO forces in the Black Sea in 2021.
U.S. officials have told The War Zone in the recent past that targets in Crimea are fair game for Ukrainian forces using advanced U.S. weapons. The U.S. sees Crimea as illegally occupied by Russia and no different than the territory it holds in eastern Ukraine. As such, all military targets are fair game, as well as critical infrastructure it relies on to keep its war machine and occupation efforts running.
While some Ukrainian officials claim their military carried out an attack on the base, it is not unheard of for major accidents at Russian ammunition supply depots to occur, although the chances of that being the case are relatively slim in this instance.
However, Novofedorovka is about 124 miles (200 kilometers) from the front lines.
The Saki Air Base seems to be well beyond the range of Ukraine’s long-range fires.
Ukraine has 16 M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, provided by the U.S. as well as three M270 systems provided by the United Kingdom.
Both can fire a variety of 227mm rockets, including Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) types made by Lockheed Martin, as well as the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) short-range ballistic missiles. So far, the U.S. has only provided Ukraine with an unpublicized amount of M31 rockets with 200-pound class unitary warheads, which are GPS/INS guided and can hit targets at a distance of around 43 miles (70 kilometers.) The Biden administration is reluctant to provide longer-range and harder-hitting ATACMS out of concern that it might rile the Russians. In particular, it could provide a means for Ukraine to execute precision strikes on a large variety of targets well into Russia.
200km is well beyond the range of the missiles we’ve publicly given Ukraine (and of the UK-supplied MLRS system, but within the range of the ATACMS missiles we haven’t announced we’re supplying.
It’s possible this was a long-range drone strike, as 200km is well within the range of the Turkish TB2 Bayraktar drones that Ukraine is known to possess. It’s also possible that Ukraine has developed their own long-range missile system. After all, Germany had V1s and V2s that could attacked at that range all the way back in 1944. And it’s also possible that this was a ship-launched attached fired from closer in.
Whatever the actual weapon used, there seem to be very few locations in Russian-occupied Ukraine safe from further such attacks.