Satellite images appear to show that several Russian warplanes at an airbase in Crimea were damaged or destroyed.
Ukraine’s air force said on Wednesday that nine planes had been demolished in explosions the day before – a claim denied by Russia.
The images, from US-based Planet Labs, show several fighter jets in pieces and strips of scorched earth.
A person was would have been killed and more than a dozen others injured in the series of explosions at the Russian military air base in Saky, near the resorts of the annexed Crimean peninsula.
Kyiv has not publicly claimed responsibility for the attack, but a senior Ukrainian official told Sky News that Ukrainian special forces carried out the operation.
It would be the first known major attack on a Russian military site in the Crimean peninsula, which was seized from Ukraine by the Kremlin in 2014 and used as a launching pad for the invasion of its neighbor in February.
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Explosions near a beach in Russian-occupied Crimea
Russian warplanes have used the base to strike areas in southern Ukraine.
Crimea is of enormous strategic and symbolic importance for both sides.
The Kremlin’s demand that Ukraine recognize Crimea as part of Russia was one of its main conditions for ending the fighting, while Ukraine pledged to drive the Russians out of the peninsula and all other occupied territories.
Russian authorities have sought to play down the blasts, saying on Wednesday that all hotels and beaches were unaffected on the peninsula, which is a popular tourist destination for many Russians.
Moscow said the explosions were detonations of stored munitions and were not caused by an attack.
Leading Russian news agencies quoted an unnamed ministry source as saying that “only a violation of fire safety requirements is considered the main reason for the explosion of several ammunition stores at Saky airfield.”
Ukrainian officials appeared to scoff at Russia’s explanation that a careless smoker could have caused the fire and explosion of munitions at Saky Air Base.
In a seemingly sarcastic Facebook post, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said: “The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense cannot establish the cause of the fire, but once again recalls the fire safety rules and the prohibition to smoke in unspecified places”.
He added: ‘We cannot rule out that occupants ‘accidentally’ find a ‘badge’, ‘business card’ or even ‘DNA’.”
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“We will never abandon Crimea”
A tourist, Natalia Lipovaya, said “the earth disappeared under my feet” after the powerful explosions.
Sergey Milochinsky, a local resident, recalled hearing a roar and seeing a mushroom cloud from his window. “Everything started falling apart, falling apart,” he said.
A member of Ukraine’s parliament, Oleksandr Zavitnevich, said on Facebook that the airfield – which houses fighter jets, tactical reconnaissance aircraft and military transport aircraft – was no longer usable.
Russia’s military industrial capacity is said to be “under significant pressure” and the credibility of many of its weapons systems undermined by their association with the “poor performance of its forces in the war in Ukraine”, according to British intelligence.
Russia has long considered the defense industry one of its most important export successes, the UK Ministry of Defense said.
But in its daily briefing on Thursday, the Defense Ministry said Russia was very unlikely to be able to fulfill some export orders for armored fighting vehicles due to the exceptional demand for vehicles for the own Russian forces in Ukraine and the growing effect of Western sanctions.
