#Ukraine claims 60 dead, 100 wounded, in blasts on #Crimea as satellite images show destroyed Russian aircraft
Anton Gerashenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian minister of internal affairs, claimed on Thursday that 60 pilots and technicians had been killed and 100 people wounded in a series of explosions at a Russian #Saki air base on the Black Sea Crimean Peninsula on Tuesday. Since #Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, the air base has housed the Russian 43rd Independent Naval Assault Air Squadron.
The Saki air base is at least 125 miles or 200 kilometers from the closest Ukrainian military position and none of the weapons and ammunition officially in the arsenal of the Ukrainian army can strike targets that far away. The ammunition for the American-made #HIMARS rocket system, which the US has been officially delivering since May, can only hit targets of a distance of up to 50 miles.
The #German magazine Spiegel surmised that the blasts could have been caused by a Ukrainian Grim-2 short range missile, which has been in development since 2003 and could strike targets at a distance of up to 280 kilometers. Alternatively, the #Spiegel noted, Ukraine could have used a modified #Neptun missile which may have also caused the sinking of the #Moskva. In either scenario, Russian missile defense systems on Crimea could have only been circumvented by American #AGM-88 #anti-radar #missiles. Remnants of such a missile were recently found on Ukrainian territory even though the US has not confirmed that AGM-88 missiles were among the weapons and ammunition that #Washington has officially delivered to Ukraine.
The Spiegel wrote, “This could mean that Kiev’s most important partners may have delivered also other weapons to Ukraine in secret, such as the MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (#ATACMS). The ATACMS can be used by the American HIMARS as well as the German and #British M-270 multiple launch rocket systems, which have been deployed in Ukraine for the past several weeks and have been causing serious problems, especially for Russian logistics. Currently, they [these rocket systems] can only reach up to 80 kilometers with the GMLRS-rockets, but with ATACMS they could reach up to 300 kilometers, which theoretically could make strikes on Crimea possible.”