A loud explosion roared over Kerch around 9:00 pm, shaking building walls and triggering car alarms in nearby gardens, according to witnesses.
Reports from residents cited a glow in the sky as the blast unfolded, with Komsomolskaya Pravda noting these observations from local inhabitants.
The sound reached multiple parts of the city and nearby villages, including Priozernoe, Bagerovo, and Glazovka. A Kerch News community on VKontakte recorded explosions at 20:41, 20:56, and 20:58 local time.
Oleg Kryuchkov, adviser on information policy to Crimean President Sergey Aksyonov, stated that air defense systems were active in Kerch. He added that there was no danger to the city or the bridge and suggested that Ukrainian media were pushing a broad information campaign aimed at Crimea, highlighting a potential outbreak of hostility. He urged the public to rely on official sources only.
Drone in the Kerch region
Subsequently, Volodymyr Rogov, a member of the main council of the Zaporozhye regional administration, claimed that a Ukrainian drone was shot down in the Kerch region.
Rogov said preliminary information indicated the drone was downed far from the Crimean Bridge, with no casualties or destruction reported. The press service of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Uprdor Taman emphasized that the bridge remained in good working condition.
Attempt to attack the airport in Sevastopol
Telegraph channels, citing eyewitnesses, also reported strong explosions near Belbek airbase in Sevastopol.
Initial data suggested air defense systems downed a drone in the Belbek airspace area. The regional governor stated that no injuries occurred and called for calm, urging residents to rely on information from reliable sources. Officials suggested that there were efforts to prepare for a larger attack, which were being observed by some observers.
Crimea entered a high alert level for terrorist threats, a status that had previously been extended to August 24. The same security regime applied in the Bryansk, Kursk, and Belgorod regions.
On August 17, a Ukrainian official described in an interview with The Guardian the planned use of armed forces to strike Crimea, characterizing the Crimean bridge as an illegal and strategically important target for Russia.
Plans to strike Crimea were discussed as part of official statements, with officials noting that certain targets in Ukrainian territory would be used in self-defense when necessary. The phrasing indicated a view of Crimea as part of Ukraine from a political perspective, though the question of explicit targeting remained nuanced in different public statements.
Plans to attack Crimea
A senior White House official was cited by Politico as saying that the United States allowed Ukraine to use American weapons to strike in Crimea, framing actions as self-defense on sovereign Ukrainian territory. The official also asserted that Crimea is Ukraine’s territory in terms of U.S. policy.
Earlier, Ukrainian Defense Minister voiced a conditional stance regarding the use of U.S.-supplied weapons, noting that Washington had not set restrictions on operations in Crimea, and citing that other regions might be managed differently. He explained that weapon choice depends on range and the point of attack. He also stated that ATACMS missiles for the HIMARS system had not yet been provided by the United States, though this could change with a political decision. The remark highlighted that the presence of HIMARS has shifted the war’s dynamics and suggested that ATACMS could influence future battlefield developments.
Official channels had previously acknowledged the possibility of attacking Crimean territories with the help of long-range U.S. systems, while noting varying stances on Crimea’s status. A Ukrainian commander identified the Kerch bridge to Taman as a high-priority target, and the Ukrainian presidential office indicated readiness to strike if a technical opportunity arose, pointing to equipment movement from the bridge toward the peninsula.
The Russian Federation’s Federation Council described such statements as justification for potential retaliation and criticized them as signals of a possible terrorist act. The Kremlin labeled these threats as part of broader security concerns.
Early on the morning of August 16, a fire broke out at a temporary military depot in the Dzhankoysky district of Crimea, followed by ammunition explosions. The Russian Ministry of Defense attributed the incident to sabotage. Earlier, on August 9, a sequence of explosions occurred at the Saki airfield near the village of Novofedorovka, with officials reporting a large blast of aviation munitions and a resulting fire, while ruling out shelling as the cause.