The attack on the depot in central Crimea sent huge plumes of black smoke skyward and came five days after Ukraine struck a key bridge that links Russia to the peninsula it illegally annexed in 2014, and after Moscow suspended a wartime deal that allowed Ukraine to safely export its harvested grain through the Black Sea.
Sergey Aksyonov, the Kremlin-appointed head of Crimea, said on Telegram that there were no immediate reports of casualties, but authorities were evacuating civilians in 5-km radius of the blast site.
The Ukrainian military took credit for the strike, saying it destroyed an oil depot and Russian military warehouses in Oktyabrske, in the Krasnohvardiiske region of Crimea, though without specifying which weapons it used.
A Crimean news channel posted videos Saturday showing plumes of smoke billowing above rooftops and fields near Oktyabrske, a small settlement next to an oil depot and a small military airport, as loud explosions rumbled in the background. In one video, a man can be heard saying the smoke and blast noises seemed to be coming from the direction of the airport.
The strike came during a week in which Ukraine attacked the Kerch Bridge and Russia, in what it described as “retribution” for the bridge attack, bombarded southern Ukrainian port cities, damaging critical infrastructure including grain and oil terminals. There was an attack on the bridge in October, when a truck bomb blew up two of its sections, which took months to repair.
Earlier Saturday, Ukrainian officials said Russian attacks on 11 regions on Friday and overnight had killed eight civilians and wounded others. The Ukrainian air force on Saturday said that overnight, it had brought down 14 Russian drones, including five Iranian-made ones.