Crimea has long been spared the violence of war, but now Ukraine seems to have found a way to hit targets that were previously out of range.
At least twelve explosions could be heard at the Russian airbase Saki near the town of Novofedorivka on the Crimean west coast on Tuesday around 3.20 pm local time, more than 200 kilometers from the front. Videos show how bathers in Crimea in their swimming trunks look stunned at the explosions a few kilometers away from the Black Sea beach. Fireballs rise and with a new explosion the curtains of the bath cubicles are blown up by the shock wave.
A Ukrainian missile attack should not be possible there. At least not with missiles in the well-known Ukrainian arsenal. Soviet-made Totchka-U missiles, of which Ukraine has little left, are not getting that far. The much-discussed western HIMARS precision missiles, which have already blown up many Russian targets, do not reach that distance either. The GMLRS rocket used can reach a maximum range of ninety kilometers. Another type of HIMARS missile, the ATACMS, can reach 300 kilometers, but the US says it will not supply it to Ukraine for the time being.
Then what? Immediately after the attack, speculation erupted among military experts and bloggers. Did the US provide ATACMS missiles? The Ukrainian Defense Ministry sarcastically pointed out the dangers of smoking at work on Facebook.
Then maybe a drone attack by partisans? Ukrainians have gotten good at targeting Russian tanks and positions with converted mortar shells dropped from hobby drones. And exploding ammunition can detonate adjacent ammunition.
The New York Times quotes a Ukrainian government official as saying that the attack was carried out with “a weapon of exclusively Ukrainian manufacture”. That could point to a Neptune ship missile, the weapon that sank the Russian naval vessel Moskva in April. This missile, with a range of 280 kilometers, crosses low over the water and is mainly intended to hit ships, but can also be deployed against a sea base.
Shortly after the explosions, Russia’s TASS news agency said it was a “detonation of several ammunition depots” without citing a cause.
Earlier in the day, a Ukrainian military adviser also reported a rocket attack on a target ammunition depot near Novoaleksiivka, on the mainland north of Crimea, 150 kilometers from the front. That attack appears to be corroborated by local reports and videos of exploding ammunition.
Regardless of the weapon, these attacks mean that Russian military personnel should be concerned. It appears that Ukraine has a weapon with sufficient range to hit targets beyond 200 kilometers, and not just in Crimea.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of August 10, 2022
#Ukraine #target #targets #Crimea