This satellite image provided by Planet Labs PBC shows a destroyed Russian aircraft at Saki Air Base after an explosion on Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022. Planet Labs PBC/The Associated Press
Satellite images released on Thursday showed devastation at a Russian air base in Crimea hit days earlier in an attack, suggesting Kyiv may have gained a new long-range strike capability with the potential to change the course of the war.
Images released by the independent satellite firm Planet Labs show three nearly identical craters that have directly hit buildings at Russia’s Saki Air Base. The base on Crimea’s southwest coast has suffered extensive fire damage, with the burnt casings of at least eight destroyed fighter jets clearly visible.
Russia has denied the planes were damaged and said the explosions seen at the base on Tuesday were accidental.
Ukraine has not publicly claimed responsibility for the attack, nor has it said exactly how it was carried out.
“Officially, we do not confirm or deny anything; there are numerous scenarios of what could have happened … given that there were several epicenters of explosions at exactly the same time,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podoliak said in a statement to Reuters.
Western military experts said the scale of the damage and the apparent precision of the strike suggested a powerful new capability with potentially important implications.
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Russia, which annexed Crimea in 2014, uses the peninsula as a base for its Black Sea fleet and as a main supply route for its invasion force occupying southern Ukraine, where Kyiv is planning a counteroffensive in the coming weeks.
“I’m not an intelligence analyst, but it doesn’t look good,” tweeted Mark Hertling, the former commander of US ground forces in Europe, linking to an image of the devastation at the Russian base.
“I am. It’s very good,” replied his colleague, a retired four-star US general, Michael Hayden, a former head of the CIA and the National Security Agency.
The Institute for the Study of War think tank said Ukrainian officials described the strike in Crimea as “the beginning of Ukraine’s counter-offensive in the south, suggesting that the Ukrainian military expects intense fighting in August and September that could decide the outcome of the next phase of the war.”
Exactly how the attack was carried out remains a mystery. Some Ukrainian officials have been quoted as suggesting that this may have been sabotage by infiltrators. But the near-identical impact craters and simultaneous explosions seem to indicate it was hit by a volley of new long-range weapons capable of evading Russian defenses.
The base is well beyond the range of the advanced missiles Western countries admit to having sent into Ukraine so far, but within range of the more powerful versions Kyiv is seeking. Ukraine also has its own surface-to-ship missiles that could theoretically be used to strike targets on land.
Ukraine pushed Russian forces back from the capital, Kyiv, in March and from the outskirts of the second-largest city, Kharkiv, in May. Russia seized more territory in the east in massive battles that killed thousands of soldiers on both sides in June.
Since then, the front lines have been largely static, but Kyiv says it is preparing a major push to retake the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhia, the bulk of territory captured after the February 24 invasion held by Moscow.
Russia has fortified these regions, but its defenses depend on being able to control supply lines to supply its troops with the thousands of rounds a day that its heavy artillery forces are used to firing.
Kyiv hopes the arrival last month of US missile systems capable of striking Russian targets behind the front lines will tip the balance in its favour. But the West has so far held back on providing longer-range missiles that could strike deep into Russia itself or hit Moscow’s many bases in annexed Crimea.
Russia says its “special military operation” will plan to protect Russian-speakers in the south and east, where it recognizes separatists as independent. Ukraine and its Western allies say the invasion failed in an initial attempt to topple the government in Kyiv, and Moscow is now aiming to consolidate its control over as much territory as possible with the ultimate goal of destroying Ukraine as an independent nation.
Tens of thousands of people have died, millions have fled and cities have been destroyed since Russia invaded on February 24.
On Thursday, Russia rejected Switzerland’s offer to represent Moscow’s diplomatic interests in Kyiv and vice versa. Historically neutral Switzerland has a long tradition of offering its embassies to host diplomatic offices of countries in conflict with each other and already represents Russia in Georgia.
But Moscow said Switzerland was no longer neutral because it had signed up to most EU sanctions against Russia.
Although there have been several major advances on both sides in recent weeks, intense clashes are still ongoing.
Ukraine reported Russian bombing along the entire front line, from the area around Kharkiv in the northeast, in eastern Donetsk Oblast and along the banks of the wide Dnieper River in Zaporozhye, Kherson and neighboring provinces.
Dnipropetrovsk regional governor Valentin Reznichenko said three people were killed and seven wounded in shelling in Nikopol on the right bank of the Dnieper, which was hit by 120 Grad rockets.
Russian-backed separatists claim to have captured Pisky, a small town on the outskirts of the separatist-held city of Donetsk, where fighting has raged in recent days.
“It’s hot in Piski. The city is ours, but scattered pockets of resistance remain in the north and west,” separatist official Danil Bezsonov said on Telegram.
Ukrainian authorities have denied that the city has fallen. Reuters was unable to verify the battlefield accounts.
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, said in an interview posted on YouTube that Russia’s “advance toward Pisky” had been “unsuccessful.”
Ukraine accused Russia on Wednesday of killing at least 13 people and wounding 10 with missiles fired from the vicinity of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, knowing it would be risky for Ukrainian forces to return fire.
“The cowardly Russians can do nothing more, so they strike at cities hiding in the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant,” Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to President Volodymyr Zelensky, said on social media.
Ukraine says about 500 Russian soldiers are at the plant, where Ukrainian technicians continue to work. The Group of Seven major industrialized countries on Wednesday told Russia to return the plant to Ukraine after the UN atomic watchdog warned of the possibility of a nuclear disaster.
A Russian air base near seaside resorts in the annexed Crimean peninsula was rocked by a series of explosions that Moscow said were detonations of stored munitions and not the result of any attack.
Reuters
This content appears as provided to The Globe by the original telegraph service. Not edited by Globe staff.
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