More blasts in Russian-held areas off Ukraine’s front lines

Explosions were reported overnight near military bases within Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine and within Russia’s territory, as Ukrainian forces demonstrate their ability to wreak havoc on Moscow’s logistics away from the front lines. appear.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said in televised remarks on Friday that Ukrainian officials’ statements about striking facilities in Russian-occupied Crimea reflect “an escalation of conflict openly encouraged by the United States and its NATO allies”. mark.

“America’s deep and open involvement in the war in Ukraine” effectively puts the US on the verge of becoming a party to the conflict, Ryabkov said.

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“We don’t want an escalation, we want to avoid a situation where America becomes a party to the conflict, but so far we haven’t seen their readiness to take those warnings deeply and seriously,” he said. Told.

In Crimea – the peninsula Russia occupied and annexed in 2014 – explosions were reported overnight near an airport in Belbek on the southwest coast near Sevastopol, the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

At the opposite end of the peninsula, the sky was also lit in Kerch near a giant bridge to Russia, with what Russia said was fire from its air defenses.

Within Russia, two villages were evacuated after an explosion at an ammunition dump in Belgorod province, near the border with Ukraine, but more than 100 km (60 mi) away from an area controlled by Ukrainian forces.

Belgorod region governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Friday that residents were evacuated after a fire broke out at an arms depot near the village of Timonovo.

The governor said about 1,100 people live in the villages of Timonovo and Soloti, but there were no casualties in the fire that broke out late Thursday.

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Kyiv has created an atmosphere of ambiguity around such incidents by withholding official comment on explosions and fires inside Crimea or Russia, yet has also indicated that Ukrainian forces using long-range weapons or sabotage were responsible.

Last week, nine Russian warplanes were reportedly destroyed at an air base in Crimea, demonstrating both the vulnerability of the Russians and the Ukrainians’ ability to strike deep behind enemy lines.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky pointed to the Ukrainian military’s increasing attacks behind enemy lines after the blasts in Crimea, which Russia has blamed for “sabotage”.

Stephen Wolff, professor of international security at the University of Birmingham, told Al Jazeera that Ukrainian attacks inside Russian-controlled territory demonstrate Kyiv’s growing military capabilities and the dismay of Moscow’s war effort.

“I think this indicates that Ukraine is now increasingly moving into Russia’s strategic depth as far as its supply lines are concerned. And it is very important that the Russians are still there, especially, around Kharkiv. And in the Donbass region, trying to mount the aggressors, and also trying to counter the offensive that Ukraine is moving south in the Kherson region,” Wolff said.

“Therefore, disrupting Russian supplies would make Russian efforts on all three fronts more difficult, and this is clearly a very important development from a Ukrainian perspective.

“I think it’s definitely a new trend that we’ve seen there,” he said.

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“But, I think in general, it goes along a trajectory where we’ve seen Ukraine using more sophisticated Western-supplied weapons, but also expanding our reach into the Russian-controlled areas that you see.” We can say guerrilla warfare or partisan warfare. And this is clearly a matter of great concern for Russia, not only in the sense that they may lose control of these areas, but also that it would undermine their general war effort. ,” Wolff continued.

“This potentially dents Russian hopes that they will be able to hold a plebiscite, as they have announced in the Kherson region, in order to, again, aggressive there and claim these territories as independent states or part of to go to Russia. ”

Russian officials said no casualties were reported in the latest incidents in Crimea or Belgorod. He also said that he shot down Ukrainian drones in Belbek and Kerch.

“It certainly looks bad – or good – depending on perspective,” tweeted former Swedish prime minister Karl Bildt, along with video showing massive fire and smoke rising in the night sky over the Russian base in Belbek. Reuters could not confirm the authenticity of the video.

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More blasts in Russian-held areas off Ukraine’s front lines

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(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by News East India staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)