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The attack on the warehouse in central Crimea sent huge plumes of black smoke rising five days after Ukraine struck a key bridge linking Russia to the peninsula it illegally annexed in 2014, and after Moscow suspended a wartime agreement that allowed Ukraine to safely export its harvested grain across the Black Sea.
Sergei Aksionov, the Kremlin-appointed president of Crimea, said on Telegram that there were no immediate reports of casualties, but that authorities were evacuating civilians within a 5-kilometre radius of the blast site.
The Ukrainian military took credit for the strike, saying it destroyed an oil depot and Russian military warehouses in Oktyabrsk, in Crimea’s Krasnohvardeysk region, though it did not specify what weapons it used.
A news channel in Crimea released videos on Saturday showing plumes of smoke rising over rooftops and fields near Oktyabrsky, a small settlement next to an oil depot and a small military airfield, as loud explosions rang out in the background. In one of the videos, a man can be heard saying smoke and explosive noises seem to be coming from the direction of the airport.
The strike came during a week in which Ukraine attacked the Kerch Bridge, and Russia, in what it described as “retaliation” for the attack on the bridge, bombed port cities in southern Ukraine, damaging vital infrastructure including grain and oil terminals. The bridge was attacked in October, when a truck bomb blew up two of its sections, and it took months to repair.
Earlier on Saturday, Ukrainian officials said that Russian attacks in 11 regions on Friday and overnight killed eight civilians and injured others. The Ukrainian Air Force said on Saturday that it had shot down 14 Russian drones overnight, including five Iranian-made ones.
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