Russian official says Crimean fuel tank blaze likely drone attack

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Russian-installed governor Mikhail Razvozhayev wrote on Telegram that a huge fire has broken out in Sevastopol.

A massive fire has broken out in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol after a suspected drone attack on a fuel storage tank, Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Russian-installed governor, wrote on Telegram.

“A fuel tank is on fire… Preliminary reports say a drone strike may have started the fire,” he wrote early Saturday, according to Russia’s TASS news agency.

He said an area of ​​1,000 square meters (nearly 11,000 square feet) was engulfed in flames. There was no immediate information on casualties.

Ukraine has repeatedly declared its intention to retake the Crimean peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, amid international outcry.

The Sevastopol fire comes a day after a barrage of Russian missiles hit residential areas in Ukraine killing 25 people and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged his allies to equip his troops with better air defenses, including fighter jets.

“Air defense, a modern air force – without which effective air defense is impossible – artillery, armored vehicles. Everything that is necessary to provide security to our cities, to our villages, both in the hinterland and on the front lines,” Zelenskyy said in a video message on Friday evening.

He condemned the attack in the town of Uman in the early hours of Friday, which he said killed at least 23 people, including four children.

Ten residential buildings were hit by rockets in Uman, Cherkasy region, officials said. An apartment building was destroyed. Eighteen people were injured in the attack, nine of them were treated in hospital.

In the Dnipropetrovsk region, a mother and her two-year-old daughter were also killed in nightly Russian shelling.

“Russian evil can be stopped with weapons – our defenders are doing it. And it can be stopped by sanctions – global sanctions must be strengthened,” Zelenskyy wrote on Twitter earlier in the day.

Ukrainian army commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi on Friday gave the total number of missiles fired into Ukraine at night as 23. Of these, 21 were shot down, along with two drones. The Ukrainian military said cruise missiles were also fired near the capital Kyiv, 11 of which were shot down by air defenses.

Firing in the Russian-controlled eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk killed seven people and injured 19, local authorities said on Friday.