Satellite images appear to show that several Russian warplanes at an air base in Crimea have been damaged or destroyed.
Ukraine’s air force said on Wednesday that nine planes were downed in explosions a day earlier, a claim Russia denied.
The images, from US-based Planet Labs, show several warplanes in pieces and swathes of scorched earth.
Image: The air base before the attack
One person has been reported killed and more than a dozen others injured in a series of explosions at the Russian Saky military airbase near tourist centers in 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 post on the Crimean peninsula, which the Kremlin seized from Ukraine in 2014 and used as a launch pad for its neighbor’s invasion in February.
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0:31 Explosions near the beach in Russian-occupied Crimea
Russian warplanes have used the base to attack areas of southern Ukraine.
Crimea is of great strategic and symbolic importance to both sides.
The Kremlin’s demand that Ukraine recognize Crimea as part of Russia has been one of its key conditions for an end to the fighting, while Ukraine has pledged to expel Russians from the peninsula and all other occupied territories.
Russian authorities tried to play down the explosions, saying on Wednesday that all hotels and beaches were unaffected on the peninsula, which is a popular tourist destination for many Russians.
The attack on the air base in Crimea “a very public and costly failure” for Russia
Justin Crump, director general of intelligence company Sibylline and a former British military veteran, said it appeared that SU24 and SU30 attack aircraft belonging to naval aviation were destroyed in the attack.
“Ukraine has claimed that nine planes were destroyed, and the satellite images appear to show at least that,” he told Sky News. “Ukraine carried out this attack but we don’t know for sure how.”
He said: “They have indicated privately that special forces were probably used. That seems credible given a previous attack on the fleet headquarters in Sevastopol two weeks ago. It was a drone attack, but it shows that they have the capability and people operating around Sevastopol, and the US has said no US-supplied weapons were used, so everything points to Ukrainian ingenuity.
“It appears that there were three locations where very large explosions occurred, apparently centered on buildings and ammunition storage, which subsequently impacted nearby aircraft.”
He added: “Russia can replace these planes, but they cannot replace the loss of confidence in Crimea as a safe zone, including for Russian tourists.
“It’s a very public and costly failure that will further fuel paranoia in the Russian military, while Ukraine will try to remain the element of surprise in its operations.”
Moscow said the explosions were the detonation of stored ammunition and had not been caused by an attack.
Russia’s main 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 the Saky airfield.” .
Ukrainian officials appeared to scoff at Russia’s explanation that a careless smoker could have caused munitions at the Saky air base to catch fire and explode.
In an apparently sarcastic post on Facebook, the Ukrainian defense ministry said: “The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine cannot establish the cause of the fire, but once again reminds of fire safety rules and the ban on smoking in unspecified locations.”
It added: “We cannot rule out that the occupants ‘accidentally’ found some characteristic ‘badge’, ‘business card’ or even ‘DNA’.”
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0:38 “We will never give up Crimea”
One tourist, Natalia Lipovaya, said “the earth had disappeared from 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 to fall, to collapse,” he said.
A member of the Ukrainian parliament, Oleksandr Zavitnevich, said on Facebook that the airfield – which houses fighter jets, tactical reconnaissance aircraft and military transport aircraft – could no longer be used.
Russia’s military industrial capacity is said to be “under significant strain” and the credibility of many of its weapons systems is undermined by its association with the “underperformance of its forces in the Ukraine war “, according to British intelligence.
Russia has long considered the defense industry to be one of its biggest export successes, the UK Ministry of Defense said.
But at its daily briefing on Thursday, the Defense Ministry said it was highly unlikely that Russia would be able to fulfill some export orders for armored fighting vehicles due to exceptional demand for the vehicles for the Russia in Ukraine and the growing effect of Western sanctions.