Crimea fuel depot on fire as Ukraine readies counteroffensive

KYIV, Ukraine: A huge fire erupted in Moscow-annexed Crimea after a suspected drone attack hit an oil depot on Saturday, as fighting intensified on the southern Ukrainian front and shelling deprived Russian border villages of power.

The attacks came one day after Kyiv said preparations for a long-awaited counteroffensive were nearly complete, having vowed to expel Russian forces from territory they seized in the east and south following their 2022 invasion.

On Friday, a Russian strike on a bloc of flats in the central Ukrainian city of Uman killed 23 people, including a baby boy. On Saturday, officials in Moscow-controlled Crimea, towns under Russian occupation in southern Ukraine and a governor of a border region reported attacks.

Fears of Ukrainian reprisals more than a year into Moscow´s offensive have grown in Russia, where a range of cities have cancelled traditional May 9 celebrations to mark Soviet victory over the Nazis at the end of World War II in 1945.

In Sevastopol, home to Russia´s Black Sea Fleet, clouds of smoke rose high into the sky as a fuel reserved burned. The port city has been hit by a series of drone attacks since Moscow´s invasion of Ukraine began more than a year ago. Russian-installed authorities said the fire was caused by a suspected drone but sought to downplay the incident, amid rising security fears on the peninsula. The Kremlin said nothing about the attack.

It came less than 24 hours after Russia struck a typical Soviet-era housing bloc in the historic city of Uman, killing more than two dozen of its residents.

Ukraine did not claim the Crimea attack, but military intelligence implied it was revenge for Uman. Andriy Yusov, from the defence ministry´s intelligence unit, said it was “God´s punishment, in particularly for the civilians killed in Uman.”

On the Russian-annexed peninsula, the governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, urged Crimeans to “remain calm” and said “nobody was hurt.” He estimated the fire was “around 1,000 square metres” (10,764 square feet).

Elsewhere, Russia accused Poland -- with whom it has historically poor relations -- of a “blatant violation” of international norms after Warsaw impounded a school run by the Russian embassy in the Polish capital.