A loud explosion rang out over the strategic, Russian-occupied port city of Sevastopol on Thursday and Russia said it had intercepted a drone, indicating that Kyiv is keeping up its efforts to hit back against Moscow beyond the front lines of the war.
The city’s Russian-appointed governor Mikhail Razvozhaev said on Telegram that Russia’s Black Sea Fleet had shot down an unmanned aerial vehicle over the sea. “Our military, as always, worked well,” he added.
The Black Sea Fleet is headquartered in Sevastopol, on the Crimean peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Throughout the war, Moscow has used the ships to launch cruise missiles against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, including repeated assaults on its power grid.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, told reporters on Thursday that Crimea and Sevastopol faced the risk of attacks, but that the region was ready to repel them. “Risks certainly exist, because the Ukrainian side continues its line of organizing terrorist attacks,” Peskov said, adding that “effective measures are being taken to counter (them).”
Peskov’s comments came several days after the Russian Defense Ministry accused Ukraine of using drones to carry out three strikes on Russian military air bases, yet two of the targets are hundreds of miles inside Russian territory and beyond the reach of Ukraine’s declared drone arsenal.
Two residents of Sevastopol were also detained Thursday on suspicion of treason by means of sharing information with Ukraine’s Security Service, according to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) press service, which claimed that they shared the “location of facilities of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation for a fee” with Kyiv. Criminal proceedings have begun against the two suspects, who are facing charges of “high treason,” the FSB said.
