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By Isabel van Brugen
News Reporter
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A huge fire engulfed an oil depot near an airport in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi in the early hours of Wednesday morning after a reported drone strike.
According to Agentstvo, an investigative site launched in 2021, the drone fell 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) from Russian President Vladimir Putin's residence in Sochi.
Veniamin Kondratyev, governor of Russia's Krasnodar region, said on his Telegram channel that a fuel tank caught fire, causing a blaze about 100 square meters in size. No casualties were reported.
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Ukraine rarely claims responsibility for attacks inside Russia, and Kyiv has not officially commented on the latest incident. Newsweek has contacted Russia's foreign ministry for comment via email.
Local authorities didn't comment on the cause of the explosion, but according to the Shot Telegram channel, a fuel tank caught fire after about 5 a.m. local time. "Preliminarily, the fire could have been the result of a drone attack," Shot reported.
The Baza Telegram channel, which is linked to Russia's security services, reported that the cause of the fire in Sochi was a "drone attack."
"According to preliminary data, a kamikaze drone crashed into a tank with diesel fuel," Baza reported.
Videos and images posted on social media showed flames and huge plumes of smoke rising into the sky.
The fire has now been extinguished, according to Alexei Kopaigorodskyi, the city's mayor.
"There were no casualties," Kopaigorodskyi said in a post on his Telegram channel. "The airport and the entire transport system are operating as normal."
Kopaigorodskyi added that the cause of the blaze is being investigated.
Drone attacks on Russian soil have increased in intensity throughout Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine, which he launched on February 24, 2022. The attacks have targeted military facilities and critical infrastructure.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky previously said that attacks on Russian territory are an "inevitable, natural and absolutely fair process."
Boris Bondarev, who worked as a diplomat in the Russian ministry of foreign affairs from 2002 to 2022, told Newsweek in February that Ukraine must strike legitimate targets inside Russia to win the war.
"You cannot win the war if you don't hit your enemy," Bondarev said in a phone interview from Switzerland. "Of course, [Ukraine] must not hit civilian targets like Russia does in Ukraine."
Bondarev was a counselor at the Russian Mission to the United Nations Office in Geneva, Switzerland, before he quit in May 2022 over Putin's war in Ukraine.
Russia, meanwhile, targeted Ukraine with several groups of attack drones overnight on Wednesday, according to the Ukrainian Air Force.
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Update 9/20/23, 8:06 a.m. ET: This article was updated with a new headline and additional information.
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