Ukraine says it has “successfully” struck the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea fleet using Storm Shadow and SCALP cruise missiles.
Such weapons have been supplied by the UK and France to the Ukrainian military in its fight against Russia’s invasion.
The navy building caught fire after being hit by the strike in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol, according to Moscow and its allies.
One serviceman was missing following the attack, said the Russian defence ministry which earlier stated he had been killed.
The city’s Russian-installed governor, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said the strike caused a fire and no one was injured outside the building but he did not talk about any other casualties.
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Firefighters battled the blaze and more emergency forces were being brought in – a sign of the large scale of the fire.
A stream of ambulances arrived at the building and shrapnel was scattered around an area of hundreds of metres, the Tass news agency reported, adding police asked residents to leave the city centre, where the naval HQ is located.
Mr Razvozhayev initially told Sevastopol residents that another attack was possible and urged them not to leave buildings or go into the centre.
He later said there was no longer any threat of an airstrike but reiterated that people should not go to the central part of the city.
The defence ministry said five missiles were shot down by its air defence systems responding to the Sevastopol attack.
It was not immediately clear if the HQ was hit in a direct strike or by debris from an intercepted missile.
Navy HQ attack part of well co-ordinated plan by Ukraine
Over the last few weeks the Ukrainians have been mounting a pretty intensive counter-attack, but there have also been drone attacks and missile attacks all over the place.
This is part of a well co-ordinated plan by Ukraine. One of the reasons they’re attacking the Russian Black Sea fleet is they’re trying to push it further east.
Why is that? It is because the fleet has been providing a lot of logistics support for the Russian forces in occupied Ukraine, so Kyiv is trying to stop the navy resupplying troops via Crimea and make life more difficult for them.
Ukraine does not have a navy to compete with Russia, but it has been conducting asymmetric attacks against Russian ships and submarines – at sea and in Sevastopol dock – and now the military HQ in Sevastopol.
Likewise on the Dnipro River, the Kakhovka Dam was blown up by the Russians in June because that protected their flank. All that water has now subsided and the Ukrainians keep mounting attacks across Dnipro. That is significant because it’s fixing Russian forces across that side of the country.
In Bakhmut, which is tactically an insignificant city, the Russians have put 70,000 to 80,000 forces there because it’s so symbolic, and therefore by attacking that area the Ukrainians are fixing Russian forces up there as well.
And by continuing attacks on Crimea, again the Russian forces that would otherwise be used to bolster the frontline have had to be kept there.
Finally up in Moscow, Ukrainian drone attacks there mean Vladimir Putin will be worried about his own defences as well.
So all of this is about forcing Russia to make priorities about where it positions its military forces.
Western military support is vital to enable such precision attacks against strategic targets – which are usually very well defended. High-tech, precision-strike weapons such as Storm Shadow enable Ukraine to strike high-value targets with a high degree of accuracy.
That is why Ukraine is so heavily dependent on Western support – in Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s own words, “give me the weapons or we lose the war”.
Reports suggest Ukrainian armour has broken through the comprehensive layered defences to the east of Zaporizhzhia. If this is verified, that could be the most significant progress since the start of the Ukrainian counter-offensive nearly four months ago.
Read more:
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‘Unprecedented’ cyberattack in Crimea
Meanwhile, Crimea has been struck by an “unprecedented” cyberattack in the wake of the missile strike, according to an official.
“An unprecedented cyberattack on Crimean internet providers,” noted Oleg Kryuchkov, an adviser to the Russian governor of the region, on Telegram.
“We are detecting interruptions in the internet on the peninsula,” he added. “All services are working to eliminate the threat.”
The outage has not been verified and it was not clear what could have caused it.
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‘We in Ukraine will not give up’
The missile attack comes a day after five people were killed when Russian missiles and artillery pounded cities across Ukraine.
Also on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met US President Joe Biden and congressional leaders in Washington.
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Mr Biden has been pressing Congress to approve an extra aid package for Ukraine worth $24bn (£19.5bn) amid Russia’s ongoing invasion.
The Crimean Peninsula was annexed from Ukraine by Russia in 2014 in an act that most of the world saw as illegal.
