After a series of explosions took place on Tuesday, August 9, near the Saki military airfield near the village of Novofedorovka in western Russian-occupied Crimea, experts have come up with different versions of what happened. Russia claims that the fire started there without outside influence, as was the case with the sinking of the cruiser Moskva. Ukraine, on the other hand, gives conflicting explanations.

According to eyewitnesses cited by Ukrainian media, there were more than ten of them, and the first two thundered almost simultaneously, almost in a second. Numerous videos and photographs of the scene posted on the Web show two columns of thick smoke rising into the sky.

It was reported that in the resort village itself, windows were broken in residential buildings, they were shaking, and 20 km from Novofedorovka, an alarm went off in cars.

A fire broke out at the site. Furthermore, it is still not entirely clear whether it emerged even before the explosions. Because when they thundered, as can be seen in the video recordings, there was already smoke in the place. According to the Telegram channel “Crimea Today. News”, with reference to eyewitnesses, the airfield and ammunition depots were on fire.

Ambulance and air ambulance crews worked at the scene, around 30 people were evacuated from homes located close to the site of the explosions. According to Baza, local residents reported large numbers of ambulances heading towards Novofedorovka from Yevpatoriya, 30 kilometers away. According to the “boss” of the annexed Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, 252 people were placed in temporary accommodation centers. In Novofedorovka and in the neighboring village of Mikhailovka, the gas was turned off. More than 60 apartment buildings and 20 commercial properties were damaged.

Aksyonov announced that a five-kilometer isolation zone had been established around the scene of the incident, and a “yellow terrorist threat level” had been declared by August 24. In Novofedorovka, a municipal emergency regime was introduced.

injured and damaged

At first, the Russian side claimed that no one was injured as a result of the blasts. Later, peninsula authorities reported that one was killed and nine people were injured, and by the morning of August 10, the official death toll had risen to 14, including two children.

According to local authorities, tourists were not injured as a result of the incident in the Novofedorovka area, all hotels and beaches in the region welcome guests and residents of the peninsula as usual. However, shortly after the incident, reports began to emerge that tourists and locals began to leave Novofedorovka en masse, traffic jams formed on the roads.

Adviser to Ukraine’s Minister of Internal Affairs Anton Gerashchenko said that soon traffic jams also formed at the entrance to the Crimean bridge and on the bridge itself towards Russia. “Tourists on the east coast of Crimea – Kerch, Feodosia, Planerskoye rushed to flee en masse,” the report says. According to eyewitnesses, the traffic jam starts “long before the Crimean bridge” and moves very slowly.

According to a statement from the Ministry of Defense, the airfield’s aviation equipment was not damaged. Meanwhile, photos are circulating on social media, allegedly taken at the airport, showing at least one plane destroyed, as well as a video of several vehicles damaged and set on fire. The parking lot where this geolocated video was filmed is located about 600-800 meters from the warehouses where the explosions took place, and the planes, according to satellite images, were even closer to them.

In turn, the command of the air forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, publishing data on the military losses of the Russian army on the morning of August 10, accompanied them with a postscript: “Saki! Minus nine aircraft from the invaders”, suggesting thus the number of aircraft lost by the enemy as a result of explosions at a military base.

What is known about Saki airfield

The Saki military airfield near the village of Novofedorovka is used as an airbase by the RF Ministry of Defense. Aircraft and helicopters are based here, including naval aviation, according to the TASS agency. In addition, there is a ground test training complex for the practice of taking off and landing naval aircraft. The 43rd Fighter Aviation Regiment of the Russian Aerospace Forces was based at the airfield.

The Ukrainian research program “Schemes” notes that this is one of the main airfields of Russian aviation on the occupied peninsula, it was repeatedly used by aircraft that attacked the territory of Ukraine.

According to data provided by the Advisor to the Office of the President of Ukraine Oleksiy Arestovich, dozens of aircraft were stationed at Saki airfield: 13 Su-30SM fighter jets, 12 Su-24MR bombers, 1 Il-76 heavy military transport aircraft and 6 helicopters. . One of the published records shows that the Il-76 managed to fly through smoke.

Planet Labs satellite images, taken about four hours before the Novofedorovka bombings, show a large number of Russian military aircraft and depots.

Apparently, the first two simultaneous explosions thundered from the ammunition depots located on the territory of the air base, about 600 to 700 meters away.

Russian versions: fire or detonation

According to the first version, published by the local newspaper Krymskaya Pravda, “the cause of the explosions at the Novofedorovka air base was a fire during fuel loading. Later, the Russian Defense Ministry said that “several aviation munitions detonated in the depot The statement specifically noted that “there was no fire impact on the ammunition storage area at the airfield”.

Analyzing these statements from the Russian side, the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) indicates that the Kremlin is unwilling to accuse Ukraine of launching missile attacks on a military base near Novofedorovka, because this would again demonstrate the ineffectiveness of the Russian air defense system, as it did previously with the sinking of the cruiser Moskva. .

Ukraine’s reaction

The fact that the Ukrainian military command brought the destroyed Russian planes to Saki in its morning report correcting Russian losses gave reason for observers to say that Kyiv admitted to attacking Crimea.

This is the opinion of the former adviser to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Viktor Andrusov; according to him, explosions at the airfield indicate that missiles with a range of 200 to 300 km are already being used by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

“I hope the Russians will try to refute our attack. They will say something like “accident”, “fire”, “sabotage”. The reason for this is banal – panic. To admit that we have the opportunity to attack at 300 km is to sow panic around from where the reserves and the rear are located,” Andrusov wrote on Telegram.

Meanwhile, Mikhail Podolyak, adviser to the Chief of Staff of the President of Ukraine, officially denied Kyiv’s involvement in the blasts. “Of course not. What do we have to do with it? These are, perhaps, compensatory mechanisms for ineffective management within the armed forces of the Russian Federation,” he said in the Dozhd air, answering the question whether the Ukrainian authorities take responsibility for these explosions.

Earlier, shortly after the explosions became known, Podolyak wrote on Twitter: “The demilitarization of the Russian Federation is an integral part of ensuring global security. The future of the Crimean peninsula is to be the pearl of the Black Sea, a national park with unique nature. and a world resort. Not a military base for terrorists. This is just the beginning.”

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry was evasive about the causes of the explosion. “The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine cannot establish the cause of the fire, but once again reminds the fire safety rules and the ban on smoking in unidentified places. The fire suit can be used by a terrorist country in the war of information,” the department wrote, hinting that at the site of the explosions they could “accidentally” find some “chevron”, “business card” or “DNA” feature.

Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Irina Vereshchuk recalled that August 9 marks the International Day of Indigenous Peoples, which Crimean Tatars, Karaites and Krymchaks are considered in Ukraine. “And today’s blasts in Novofedorovka are another reminder of who Crimea belongs to. Because this is Ukraine!” she said.

Touching on the topic of Crimea in his traditional evening video speech, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky emphasized that the Russian military’s presence in Crimea is a threat to the whole of Europe and global stability. According to him, there will be no stable and lasting peace in many countries on the Mediterranean coast as long as Russia can use Crimea as a military base. “This Russian war against Ukraine and against all free Europe started with Crimea and must end with Crimea – its liberation,” said the Ukrainian head of state.

What was this? Major versions

Among the main versions of the causes of the explosions are sabotage and long-range missile attacks. The defenders of the first of them are based on the fact that the distance to the Ukrainian positions on the mainland is about 220 kilometers and, as far as we know, Ukraine does not yet have American ATACMS missiles that can reach this range.

The fact that the attack on the Russian military base in Crimea was carried out by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, writes, for example, The New York Times, citing a high representative of the Ukrainian armed forces, who wished to remain anonymous. “It was a base from which planes regularly took off to attack our forces in the southern theater of operations,” the source said. At the same time, according to the NYT source, the blow was delivered by Ukrainian weapons.

The Washington Post reported a Ukrainian official who spoke on condition of anonymity that Ukrainian Special Operations Forces units were behind the attack on the airfield near Novofedorovka. However, the interlocutor of the publication did not disclose the details of the operation.

At the same time, one of the US officials, also on condition of anonymity, told WP that no US weapons were used in the attack on the airfield.

“Neptune” or “Thunder”?

Experts at the Institute for the Study of War concede that the attack could have been carried out by Ukrainian troops using a modified Neptune missile to hit ground targets. However, the ISW summary emphasizes that there is no evidence to support this hypothesis. At the same time, analysts note that on the same day, with a difference of several hours, several explosions also took place in the military warehouses of the Russian Federation in the Genichesk district of the Kherson region, contradicts the official version of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation about an accidental fire, but does not exclude sabotage or long-range missile attack.

Gustav Gressel, a German military expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, believes that if the explosions were an attack, Ukraine could have used Grom or Grom-2 missiles of its own production. However, he said, they could not have reached the target without the US-supplied anti-radar missiles, which were supposed to “drill a hole in Russian air defence”.

If we are talking about the primary strike of anti-radar missiles, this may explain the fact that, even before the first two powerful explosions, smoke was noticeable on the military base, points out Ruslan Leviev of the Conflict Intelligence Team.

If the cause of the Novofedorovka explosions was indeed attacks by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, then we are dealing with the first example of an attack on Russian facilities in Crimea – so far, the Ukrainian military has never launched attacks on the peninsula, which Russia considers its territory.