Who caused the heavy explosions in Crimea? Russia speaks of saboteurs, Ukraine is keeping a low profile. Meanwhile, President Zelenskyy is calling on Ukrainian citizens in the occupied territories to stay away from Russian army facilities.
After a series of heavy explosions at Russian military installations in Crimea, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called on Ukrainians in occupied territories to exercise caution. “Please do not go near the military facilities of the Russian army and all those places where they store ammunition and equipment, where they have their headquarters!” Zelenskyy said in his video address on Tuesday evening. He addressed this appeal to “all our people in Crimea, in other regions of southern Ukraine, in the occupied territories of Donbass and in the Kharkiv region”.
Zelenskyy did not claim the detonations as successful attacks on Ukraine. The triggers are “very different”, the Russians could also be to blame. Nevertheless, the following applies: “The fewer opportunities the occupiers have to do evil and kill Ukrainians, the sooner we can end this war by liberating our country.” The queue at the bridge to mainland Russia proves “that the absolute majority of citizens of the terrorist state already understands or at least has the feeling that Crimea is not a place for them,” Zelensky said.
Videos on social networks show that many Russian vacationers have been leaving the peninsula for days and there are traffic jams in front of the Kerch bridge. The Russian state news agency Ria Novosti reported a record 38,300 vehicles on the bridge for Monday – albeit in both directions. At the train station in the Crimean capital Simferopol, many tourists tried to get a train ticket on Tuesday.
According to Moscow, a Ukrainian drone struck the Russian Black Sea Fleet in the port city of Sevastopol on July 31. Ukraine, on the other hand, dismissed the Russian account as “invented”. The recent incidents are of great symbolic importance for both sides. They are now raising questions among Russian observers as to how well the peninsula, which Moscow has heavily armed, is actually protected. Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin has repeatedly announced that Crimea’s security should be further strengthened.
Russian regions in the border area with Ukraine have also reported an extremely tense situation since the beginning of the war of aggression. The governors of Bryansk, Kursk and Belgorod repeatedly complain about alleged shelling by Ukrainian troops.
So far, Russia has followed through on its announcements that it would bomb command centers in Kyiv if the shelling doesn’t stop, but with no action. But the threats are still there. For example, when Kyiv announced counter-offensives in the direction of Crimea as early as July, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called the Ukrainian leadership “exuberant clowns” and wrote: “If something like this happens, doomsday will come for all of them at once. Very fast and hard.” At the same time, Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu once again assured that, contrary to some fears, his country has no plans to use a nuclear weapon.
For many Ukrainians, attacks against the Crimean rulers have a special meaning because the annexed peninsula has been the epitome of Russian aggression for them for more than eight years. “This Russian war against Ukraine, against the whole of free Europe, started with Crimea and must end with Crimea, with its liberation,” Zelenskyy said recently. Since the beginning of the war almost six months ago, he has repeatedly promised his compatriots a reconquest.
