Crimea Videos Show Explosion as Ukraine Celebrates Missile Destruction

Videos have surfaced of what appears to be an explosion in a Russian-controlled town in Crimea on Monday.

Ukraine's military intelligence agency said that an explosion in the northern Crimean town of Dzhankoy had destroyed Russian Kalibr NK cruise missiles while they were being transported by rail.

The missiles can be launched from Russian vessels in Moscow's Black Sea Fleet, which is based in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol.

Crimea was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, and has been under Russian control ever since. Kyiv has committed to regaining the peninsula, located to the south of mainland Ukraine.

Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor for Ukraine's interior ministry, shared footage on Twitter of an explosion, adding a voice in the video said it was captured around the town's train station.

In another clip, shared by journalist Maria Avdeeva, a loud booming sound can be heard with a flash of light from the camera's vantage point.

Kalibr missiles have a range of more than 1,500 miles against land targets, and 230 miles against sea targets, the Ukrainian defense ministry's Main Directorate of Intelligence said in a press release, without directly claiming responsibility for the explosion.

On March 9, Ukraine said 20 Kalibr sea-launched cruise missiles had been fired at Ukrainian territory overnight, as part of a wave of strikes across the war-torn country.

The Russian-backed mayor of Dzhankoy, Igor Ivin, reported the explosion to have been the result of a drone attack, according to independent Russian outlet Meduza. A state of emergency was declared by Ivin in Dzhankoy, Russian state media reported on Tuesday.

Sergei Aksyonov, the Kremlin-backed official who has served as leader of Crimea since the peninsula's annexation nine years ago, said on Monday that one person had been injured and two buildings were damaged, but did not mention cruise missiles.

Russian state media said multiple drones were shot down by air defenses and quoted an advisor to the Russian-controlled administration as saying that there had been no military targets nearby.

Dzhankoy, which serves as a large base for the Russian military, is home to one of Russia's biggest airfields in Crimea. It is a "key road and rail junction that plays an important role in supplying Russia's operations in southern Ukraine," the British defense ministry said of the town in August 2022.