Russia accuses Ukraine of drone attack on the Crimean base of its Black Sea fleet

MOSCOW (NYTIMES, REUTERS) – Russian authorities on Sunday (July 31) accused the Ukrainians of conducting a drone attack against the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet in the port city of Sevastopol in Crimea, injuring five people and forcing authorities to cancel celebrations to honour the Russian navy.

Ukraine denied that it was behind the strike, which took place just as ceremonies for Navy Day – one of the main celebrations of the year in Sevastopol – were about to get underway. 

Mikhail Razvozhayev, Sevastopol’s governor, said in a statement that an explosion occurred Sunday morning in the courtyard of the fleet’s building in the city centre. He ordered the cancellation of the Navy Day parade and urged residents to stay home.

He blamed the attack on Ukraine, saying it had decided to “spoil Navy Day for us”. 

“An unidentified object flew into the yard of the fleet headquarters, according to preliminary data, it was a drone,” Razvozhayev said. “Five people were injured, these are employees of the fleet headquarters, there were no fatalities.” 

Photos posted online by Razvozhayev showed bloodstains and broken glass at the entrance to a military building, but little damage to the building. 

In a statement, the Black Sea Fleet said people were injured by shattered glass from the explosion, according to Tass, a Russian state news agency. 

The Guardian cited a popular Russian military account online as saying that the location was the entrance to a cafeteria, 40 to 50 metres from the internal courtyard where Russian officials said the drone had struck. 

No names or ranks were given for those injured in the attack, and the battlefield reports could not be independently verified. 

Olga Kovitidi, a member of Russia’s upper house of Parliament, told the Russian RIA news agency that the attack was “undoubtedly carried out not from outside, but from the territory of Sevastopol”.

“Urgent search operations are being conducted in the city to track down the organisers of this terrorist act. They will be found by the evening,” Kovitidi was quoted as saying.

But Russian military bloggers doubted the attack could have been launched from territory controlled by Ukraine, saying that a drone would not be able to fly so far. 

Boris Rozhin, who writes a popular blog on Telegram, called it “a terrorist act” that could have been carried out from inside Crimea by Ukraine’s security agents.

A strike at a target at the heart of the Russian military-industrial machine on a day meant for celebration had deep symbolic resonance even if the damage from what Russian authorities described as a makeshift drone was minimal.

The city of Sevastopol – annexed by Russia with the rest of Crimea in 2014 – carries an outsize symbolic value for the Russian state with its Black Sea Fleet and two famous sieges it suffered in the 19th century and during the Nazi invasion.

The Ukrainian air force and navy, in a joint statement, said the decision to cancel the Navy Day celebrations was a reflection of the growing concern over Ukraine’s ability to hit targets with precision from great distances and not the drone attack.

While dismissing the Russian claim that it was behind Sunday’s strike, the Ukrainian military said Russian military facilities inside Crimea are legitimate targets.

“We do not launch strikes on the territory of the Russian Federation,” it said. “Crimea is Ukraine.” 

Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Odesa military region, dismissed the allegation that Kyiv was behind the strike as “sheer provocation”. 

“Our liberation of Crimea from the occupiers will be carried out in another way and much more effectively,” he wrote on Telegram.

But Ukraine has actively encouraged insurgents living in occupied areas – including Crimea – to attack and disrupt Russia’s military campaign in any way they can.

While Ukraine and much of the world do not recognise Russia’s annexation of Crimea, any military attacks there would represent a broadening of the already sprawling conflict.

Speaking before a navy parade in St Petersburg, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the country would defend what it sees as its national interests on all corners of the planet and announced that new hypersonic Zircon cruise missiles would soon be deployed. He claimed the weapons could evade “all obstacles”. 

Hypersonics, generally defined as weapons capable of flying at five times the speed of sound, are at the centre of an arms race among the United States, Russia and China.

Putin did not mention the conflict in Ukraine during a speech after signing a new naval doctrine, which cast the US as Russia’s main rival and set out Russia’s global maritime ambitions for crucial areas such as the Arctic and in the Black Sea.

The Sevastopol strike is the latest setback for the Black Sea fleet in the five-month-old war against Ukraine. Ukraine sank the flagship of the Black Sea fleet, the Moskva cruiser, in a missile strike in April.