The Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Valerii Zaluzhnyi admitted that the explosions at the Saky airfield in occupied Crimea occurred after a strike by the Ukrainian military. Then the Russians lost up to 10 combat aircraft.
He wrote about this in an article on Ukrinform.
Zaluzhnyi, in a joint article with general and first deputy of the Radaʼs Defense Committee Mykhailo Zabrodsky, notes that the real "center of gravity of the war" lies in the so-called "remoteness" of the Russians from the war. That is, the army of the Russian Federation is able to strike all over the territory of Ukraine, while the Armed Forces of Ukraine only have weapons with a range of up to 100 kilometers. Thus, Russia itself does not feel the consequences of hostilities and does not suffer strikes on its territory.
"A convincing example of the correctness of this approach in the current year is the successful efforts of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to physically transfer hostilities to the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. We are talking about a series of successful missile attacks on the enemyʼs Crimean air bases, primarily on the Sak airfield," he writes.
A footnote to the article states that the airfield suffered a "combined strike" from the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
- On August 9, explosions rang out at the air base in Novofedorivka, near Saky. There, the explosions destroyed the ammunition and aircraft of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation. “The Washington Post” wrote that the explosions could have been carried out by Ukrainian special forces.
- On the morning of August 16, the Ministry of Defense of Russia reported a detonation at the temporary ammunition storage site in the village of Maiske, Dzhankoy district. The explosion also damaged the railway, which carries trains from Russia to Crimea.
- The Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense has already reported that Russian troops, after the explosions in Crimea , began to move their aircraft deep into the peninsula and into the territory of the Russian Federation. In total, the flight of at least 24 planes and 14 helicopters was recorded.