PC: Blomberg.com

According to local authorities, a number of significant explosions that shook the region of a Russian military installation in the occupied Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea on Tuesday resulted in one fatality and numerous injuries.

Large plumes of smoke could be seen rising into the air in footage from the scene. According to Russian official media RIA Novosti, the Russian defence ministry said that the explosions were caused by aviation munitions that had been fired.

According to RIA Novosti, the ministry stated in the statement that “a number of aircraft bombs detonated at 3:20 p.m. on the area of the airfield ‘Saki’ near the village of Novofedorivka.”

Five individuals were hurt as a result of the explosions, according to Konstantin Skorupsky, Minister of Health of the Republic of Crimea, earlier on Tuesday. It’s unclear if the person who passed away was one of the people who had been harmed before.

According to the health ministry, ambulance teams and an air ambulance were dispatched to the explosion site.

In 2014, Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine and now counts it as a part of its territory. The peninsula is considered to be Ukrainian territory by Kiev and its allies, who reject the annexation.
The head of the Crimean region’s advisor, Oleg Kryuchkov, acknowledged there had been numerous explosions close to the settlement of Novofedorivka.

PC: Al Jazeera

Later in the afternoon, Kryuchkov made a message on his Telegram channel in which he said approximately 30 adjacent residents had been evacuated from their homes as a result of the explosions and that an air cordon had been established around the airfield’s perimeter.

Separately, the leader of the so-called Republic of Crimea, Sergey Aksenov, said “I went to the incident in the Saki district hamlet of Novofedorivka. The situation is being explained.”
He stated that emergency personnel were on the scene and that there was “a dispersion of fragments” at the location.

In order to minimise injuries to nearby neighbours, he continued, “measures were taken to put up a cordon perimeter in a 5-kilometer zone: fencing, traffic police officers, and foot patrols.”

The Ukrainian side had not released any information regarding any potential strikes in the region. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, Ukraine is not known to have struck the land of Crimea.
The explosions occurred only a few hours after what looked to be the Ukrainian military’s most intense strike to yet on Russian-occupied areas in southern Ukraine close to the Crimean peninsula.
On Ukrainian television on Tuesday, Serhii Khlan, the advisor to the director of the Kherson Civil Military Administration, said: “This morning there was a positive news, there was a very big detonation in Henichesk district.”
The closest Ukrainian front line is around 200 kilometres (125 miles) from Henichesk, which is located in the southern Kherson region.

Khlan hypothesised that the target had been on the Henichesk–Meletopol railway.
“Although the General Staff has yet to formally confirm our Armed Forces, this is still very good news. The detonation was audible at this train station for 1.5–2 hours, connecting Crimea and Melitopol “stated he.

One of the objectives of Russia’s invasion was to establish a land corridor across the captured regions of southern and eastern Ukraine connecting Crimea to Russia.

The Russian military had “restored” 1,200 kilometres (745 miles) of train tracks and opened roads to enable “full-fledged traffic” between Russia, the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, and Crimea, the peninsula that was annexed by Russian forces from Ukraine in 2014. Moscow claimed that it had achieved this goal in June. According to Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defence minister, the delivery of water through the North Crimean Canal, which is a lifeline for Crimea, has also restarted.