Drone hits headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea fleet in Crimea

Incident highlights Russia’s vulnerability in an area that has served as a stronghold for its occupation of Ukraine’s south coast.

Smoke billows from a munitions dump in Mayskoye, Crimea, last week. Picture: AFP

A drone hit the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Crimea on Saturday, reaching the heart of a heavily fortified naval base that has allowed Moscow to project power in the region.

Mikhail Razvozhaev, the Russian-installed governor of the port city of Sevastopol, said the drone fell on the roof and caught fire after being shot down by Russian air defences.

Mr Razvozhaev blamed the incident on Ukraine’s government, saying there was no serious damage to the headquarters and no one was harmed.

The drone’s ability to penetrate Russian defences, arriving at the nerve centre of Moscow’s naval operations, delivers a symbolic blow to the Black Sea Fleet, which was recently placed under a new commander.

Ukrainian officials have hinted at involvement in a string of blasts that have tested Moscow’s grip on Crimea in recent weeks. Russian authorities have downplayed the incursions in the peninsula, which became a Russian stronghold after Moscow annexed it in 2014.

Officials in western Crimea said Russian air defences worked to repel small drones that flew over the city of Yevpatoria on Saturday morning.

A spate of explosions at Russian ammunition depots, airfields and bridges appeared to intensify the strategy Ukrainian forces have adopted in recent weeks – hitting Moscow’s supply lines in hopes of starving Russian troops west of the Dnipro River in the occupied Kherson region of resources and ultimately forcing them to retreat.

Ukraine’s immediate goal is not to retake Crimea, but to degrade Russia’s ability to wage war in the south and east, where Kyiv is seeking to regain captured territory. Until this month Crimea had served as a safe rear base to oversee Russia’s occupation of the territory along Ukraine’s southern coast. The recent explosions, however, have exposed the peninsula’s vulnerability, heaping pressure on Russia to shore up its defences there.

A blast at an air base in Crimea earlier this month put more than half of the Black Sea Fleet’s naval aviation combat jets out of use, according to Western officials.

Western officials said the explosion at the Saki airbase on August 9, combined with the loss of the flagship Moskva and the hurried abandonment of the strategically important Snake Island, had reduced the once-proud fleet to little more than a “coastal defence flotilla”.

Moscow blamed sabotage for an explosion last week at an ammunition depot on the peninsula. An official in Kyiv said it was the work of Ukraine’s supporters.

“The issue on the agenda is the step-by-step demilitarisation of the peninsula with its subsequent de-occupation,” Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, said on Friday.

Residents of Crimea who previously collaborated with Russia will receive a lighter sentence if they share information about Russian troops and equipment in the area, Mr Danilov said.

The Wall Street Journal