August 16 was a particularly turbulent day for the Russian forces deployed in Crimea. “In the Simferopol region, in the temporarily occupied Crimea, so writes the Ukrainian news site Novynarnia, there are reports of explosions and smoke at an airbase […] in the vicinity of the village Hvardiivské.”
Earlier in the morning, “a series of detonations hit a large ammunition depot in the village of Maïské, in the Djankoï region, and a fire broke out in an electrical transformer”.
Unconventional warfare
If the Russian authorities, at first, put forward the thesis of an accident, very quickly, other sources, some of them Western, suggested that the Ukrainian forces were behind these operations, as reported by the online daily Ukrainian Truth, which cites in support an article of the New York Times :
“According to media reports, an elite Ukrainian military unit was behind the early morning explosions at the depot site near Jankoy, Crimea.”
“Le New York Times, underlines daily online, speculates that Ukraine has since the start of the war resorted to unconventional warfare tactics to retaliate against a much more powerful enemy.”
A little later in the day, it