According to the British newspaper The Guardian, Russian officials report that it is a drone attack. Crimean Governor Sergei Aksenov said anti-aircraft fire was fired near Dzhankoi, but he did not say why and did not refer to cruise missiles.
An adviser to Ukraine’s interior ministry showed footage he said showed a train station in the city being hit by an explosion. The Guardian did not verify his claim.
An intelligence official at Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said yesterday that “an explosion in the city of Dzhankoi in temporarily occupied northern Crimea destroyed” Russian Kalibr-KN cruise missiles while being transported by rail. These missiles, designed to be launched from ships in the Russian Black Sea Fleet, have an operational range of more than 2,500 km on land and 375 km at sea.
Dzhankoi’s Russia-installed driver is said to have claimed that the city was attacked by drones and that a 33-year-old man suffered shrapnel from a downed drone. This was reported by the Russian state news agency Tass.
While Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for last night’s attack, it has demonstrated its ability to strike long-range targets in Crimea. Russia’s Black Sea flagship Admiral Makarov was damaged in October in a drone strike on the Crimean port of Sevastopol, according to an investigation into the video footage.
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