Massive fire at Crimea oil reserve was opening blast of Ukraine’s ‘full-scale offensive’ on Russia
The massive fire that broke out at an oil reserve in Russian-occupied Sevastopol on Saturday was an attack on Russian logistics and part of Ukraine’s “preparations” for a major counter-offensive.
A military official said Sunday that Russian operations in Crimea were undermined in the attack as the Ukrainian army assembles their highly-anticipated springtime assault.
“This work is a preparation for the broad, full-scale offensive that everyone expects,” Natalia Humeniuk, Ukraine’s Armed Forces Southern Command spokesperson, told Ukrainska Pravda.
Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Moscow-installed governor of the port city of Sevastopol, posted videos and photos of a massive black cloud of smoke rising above the blaze to his Telegram channel Saturday morning.
The head of the illegal Russian occupation government in Sevastopol later claimed a drone attack caused the large-scale fire at the oil reserve at Kozacha Bay.
“A fuel tank is on fire near Manganari Brothers Street in the Kozacha Bay area. According to preliminary information, the fire was caused by an unmanned aerial vehicle hit,” Razvozhaev wrote on Telegram.
Razvozhayev said the fire had been deemed the most dangerous in terms of difficulty in controlling the enormous flames.
He later wrote on Telegram that a single drone managed to cause the enormous fire, which had been put out by Saturday evening.
Experts on the scene determined that only one drone had reached the facility, while the wreckage of a second was found on the shore near the terminal.
Following the fire, families of Russian military members began evacuating people from the occupied peninsula, the Kyiv Independent reported.
Andriy Yusov, a Ukrainian military intelligence official, said that more than 10 oil tanks intended for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet had been destroyed in Sevastopol.
Yusov, however, did not claim that Ukraine was responsible for Saturday’s explosion but said the eruption was “God’s punishment” for Russia’s missile and drone strikes Friday across multiple Ukrainian cities.
Those attacks killed at least 25 people, six of whom were children.
Razvozhayev said no one had been injured by the fire and the attack would not affect fuel supplies in Sevastopol.
A day earlier, Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said Ukraine’s preparations for the expected counter-attack were “coming to an end” as the military completes training with weapons provided by Ukraine’s Western allies.
“The equipment has been announced, prepared, and partially delivered. There is equipment on which the training programs are at the final stage. The crews will arrive (in Ukraine) with it when the time and place will be determined,” Reznikov said during a press conference Friday.
“But let’s put it like this: We are ready by a high percentage,” he said.
The decision on when and where to launch the counteroffensive will be made by the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
Ukraine has teased a counteroffensive now for months in hopes that reclaiming its territory, including Crimea, which has been illegally occupied by Russia since 2014, will sooner bring the war to a close.
