Kyiv, Ukraine — A small explosive device carried by an improvised drone exploded at the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet on the Crimean peninsula on Sunday, injuring six people and prompting the cancellation of ceremonies honoring Russia’s navy, they said. The authorities.
Meanwhile, one of Ukraine’s richest men, a grain trader, was killed in what Ukrainian authorities said was a carefully targeted Russian missile attack on his home.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the drone explosion in a courtyard of the naval headquarters in the city of Sevastopol. But the apparently small-scale and improvised nature of the attack raised the possibility that it was the work of Ukrainian insurgents trying to drive out Russian forces.
A Russian lawmaker from Crimea, Olga Kovitidi, told the Russian state news agency RIA-Novosti that the drone was launched from Sevastopol. She said the incident was being treated as a terrorist act, the news agency said.
Crimean authorities raised the terror threat level for the region to “yellow”, the second highest level.
Sevastopol, which was seized along with the rest of Crimea from Ukraine by Russia in 2014, is about 170 kilometers (100 miles) south of mainland Ukraine. Russian forces control much of the continent along the Black Sea.
The press service of the Black Sea Fleet said the drone appeared to be homemade. He described the explosive device as “low power”. Sevastopol Mayor Mikhail Razvozhaev said six people were injured. Russian Navy Day holiday celebrations were canceled in the city.
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Ukraine’s navy and an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the reported drone attack underscores the weakness of Russian air defenses.
“Did the occupiers admit the powerlessness of their air defense system? Or their powerlessness against the Crimean partisans?” Oleksiy Arestovich said on Telegram.
If such an attack by Ukraine is possible, he said, “destruction of the Crimean bridge in such situations no longer sounds unrealistic,” a reference to the span Russia built to connect its mainland with Crimea after annexation.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, the mayor of the major port city of Mykolaiv, Vitaliy Kim, said the shelling killed one of Ukraine’s richest men, Oleksiy Vadatursky, and his wife, Raisa. Vadatursky headed a grain production and export business.
Another presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, said that Vadatursky was specifically targeted.
“It was not an accident, but a well thought out and organized premeditated murder. Vadatursky was one of the largest farmers in the country, a key person in the region, and a major employer. That the exact impact of a rocket was not only in a house, but in a specific wing, the bedroom, leaves no doubt about the aim and the adjustment of the hit, ”he said.
Vadatursky’s agribusiness, Nibulon, includes a fleet of ships for shipping grain abroad.
In the Sumy region of northern Ukraine, near the Russian border, shelling killed one person, the regional administration said. And three people have been killed in attacks over the past day in the Donetsk region, which is partly under the control of Russian-backed separatist forces, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said.
Podolyak said on Twitter that the images of the prison where at least 53 Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed in an explosion on Friday it said the blast came from inside the building in Olenivka, which is under Russian control.
Russian officials have claimed that the building was attacked by Ukraine with the aim of silencing prisoners of war who might be giving information about Ukrainian military operations. Ukraine has blamed Russia for the explosion.
Satellite photos taken before and after show that a small, boxy building in the middle of the prison complex was demolished, its roof in splinters.
Podolyak said that those images and the absence of damage to adjacent structures showed that the building was not attacked from the air or by artillery. He maintained that the evidence was consistent with a thermobaric bomb, a powerful device sometimes called a vacuum bomb, being detonated inside.
The International Red Cross requested an immediate visit to the prison to ensure that the dozens of wounded prisoners of war received proper treatment, but said on Sunday that its request had not yet been granted. He said that denying access to the Red Cross would violate the Geneva Convention on the rights of prisoners of war.