MOSCOW (AFP/AP) – A huge fire broke out on Saturday at a fuel depot in Sevastopol, the main port in Moscow-annexed Crimea, with authorities saying it was the result of a drone attack.
Sevastopol is home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and has been hit by a series of drone attacks since the Kremlin’s Ukraine offensive launched last year.
“A fuel reserve is on fire in the Kazachya Bay district” of the city, the Moscow-installed governor of Sevastopol Mikhail Razvozhayev said on Telegram in the early hours of Saturday.
“According to preliminary information, it was caused by a drone strike.”
He said the fire’s size was “around 1,000 square meters” and published images of huge clouds of smoke rising into the air.
Razvozhayev called on Crimeans to “remain calm” and in a later post said “nobody was hurt.”
He said authorities had “the situation under control” and said there was no threat to civilian infrastructure.
Earlier this week, Russia said it had “repelled” a drone attack on the port.
Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
A spokesperson for Ukraine’s armed forces said he did not have any information to suggest Ukraine was responsible for Saturday’s fire.
With newly supplied equipment from its Western allies, Ukrainian forces have announced their preparedness to launch new attacks.
The report comes amid a brewing dispute between Ukraine and the Europeans over the flood of Ukrainian grain into Europe.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said on Saturday it had passed notes to Polish and European Union representatives in Ukraine, describing the limiting of Ukrainian grain imports into EU countries as “categorically unacceptable”.
“Such restrictions, whatever the justification for them, do not comply with the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU and the principles and norms of the EU Single Market,” the ministry said.
With the intention of protecting their own farmers from cheaper Ukrainian grain and a massive amount of lying surplus, Ukraine’s neighbors, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania restricted imports of Ukrainian products earlier this month in response to a supply glut caused by disruption to exports through the Black Sea.