Satellite images appear to show extensive damage and several destroyed Russian warplanes at a Crimea airbase following explosions earlier this week.

The Saky base in the west of Russian-ruled Crimea was rocked by a string of blasts on Tuesday, killing one person.

Ukraine has not claimed responsibility - but this new evidence suggests the possibility of a targeted attack.

The images, from the US-based Planet Labs, show large areas of scorched earth left from fires that erupted.

The base's main runways seem to be intact, but at least eight aircraft appear to be damaged and destroyed, with several craters clearly visible.

Most of them are in a specific area of the base where a large number of planes were parked out in the open - away from the cover of hangars.

The before and after images from Planet Labs, which monitors hundreds of satellite feeds over Ukraine, are the first independent confirmation that the base may have been damaged. Until now, details about the extent of the explosions' impact have been scarce.

But it is still not clear how the base was damaged or by what.

Russia insists that the explosions were caused by ammunition exploding in a store because of fire safety rules being flouted.

Ukraine has not claimed responsibility - and its defence minister suggested that careless Russian soldiers could be to blame.

"I think that Russian military guys in this airbase ruined their very simply known rule: don't smoke in dangerous places," said Oleksiy Reznikov. "That's it."

Ukraine's air force said about a dozen Russian warplanes were destroyed, although Russia denied that any aircraft had been damaged. These new images suggest that is not true.

The UK's Defence Secretary Ben Wallace suggested that the fact there were two separate explosions points to an attack rather than an accident. He also defended Ukraine's right to target Crimea.

"It's absolutely legitimate for Ukraine to take lethal force, if necessary... in order to regain not only its territory, but also to push back its invader," he told the BBC.

Any attack by Ukraine inside Crimea would be seen as an escalation of the war. Russia sounded a warning last month when ex-President Dmitry Medvedev threatened that "Judgement Day will instantly await" if Ukraine targeted Crimea.

Crimea is internationally recognised as part of Ukraine - but the Black Sea peninsula was annexed by Russia in 2014. Many Ukrainians see this as the start of their war with Russia.

Following Tuesday's blasts, President Volodymyr Zelensky dedicated his nightly address to Crimea and suggested that he believed Ukraine must retake the peninsula before the war can end.

Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014, after the territory - which has a Russian-speaking majority - voted to join Russia in a referendum that the global community deem illegal.

The vote was hastily organised after unmarked Russian troops took control of several strategic sites around the peninsula.

Russia's annexation came after Ukraine's Russian-backed president was ousted following months of pro-European protests.

On 24 February this year - eight years after the Crimea annexation - Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, using Crimea as a springboard to move Russian troops deeper inside Ukraine.

In other developments:

Foreign ministers from the G7 group of nations say Russia must immediately hand back control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to Ukraine because of safety fears. The facility and its surrounding area saw shelling last week, which Russia and Ukraine blamed on each other

The Ukrainian military reports a bridge in the occupied part of Kherson region has been rendered unusable after being struck by artillery earlier in the week. Ukraine has mounted a counteroffensive in the area

Russian investigators have launched a criminal inquiry against journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, who denounced Russia's invasion on live TV

Source:
courtesy of BBC NEWS

by Joshua Cheetham, Francesca Gillett & Erwan Rivault | BBC News

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