KYIV: Powerful explosions rocked a Russian air base in Crimea and sent towering clouds of smoke over the landscape on Tuesday, killing at least one person and wounding several others, authorities said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry denied that the Saky air facility on the Black Sea had been shelled, saying munitions had blown up there, but Ukrainian social networks were abuzz with speculation that it was hit by Ukrainianfired long-range missiles.

Videos posted on social networks showed sunbathers on nearby beaches fleeing as huge flames and pillars of smoke rose over the horizon from multiple points, accompanied by loud booms. The Crimea Today News said on the Telegram platform that witnesses reported fire on a runway and damage to nearby homes as a result of what it said were dozens of blasts.

Russia’s state news agency Tass quoted an unidentified ministry source as saying the explosions’ primary cause appeared to be a “violation of fire safety requirements.” The ministry said no warplanes were damaged.

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said sarcastically on Facebook it couldn’t “establish the cause of the fire, but once again recalls the rules of fire safety and the prohibition of smoking in unspecified places.”

A presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, said cryptically in his regular online interview that the blasts were caused either by a Ukrainian-made long-range weapon or were the work of partisans operating in Crimea.

During the war, Russia has reported numerous fires and explosions at munitions storage sites on its territory near the Ukrainian border, blaming some of them on Ukrainian strikes. Ukrainian authorities have mostly remained mum about the incidents.

If Ukrainian forces were indeed responsible for the blasts at the air base, it would be the first known major attack on a Russian military site on the Crimean Peninsula, which the Kremlin annexed in 2014. A smaller explosion last month at the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in the Crimean port of Sevastopol was blamed on Ukrainian saboteurs using a makeshift drone.

Russian warplanes have used the Saki base to strike areas in Ukraine’s south on short notice.

One person was killed, Crimea’s regional leader Sergei Aksyonov said. Crimean health authorities said nine people were wounded, one of whom remained hospitalized. Others were treated for cuts from shards of glass and released.

Officials in Moscow have long warned Ukraine that any attack on Crimea would trigger massive retaliation, including strikes on “decision-making centers” in Kyiv.

For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed to retake Crimea from Russia.

“This Russian war against Ukraine and against all of free Europe began with Crimea and must end with Crimea — its liberation,” he said in his nightly video address on Tuesday. “Today, it is impossible to say when this will happen. But we are constantly adding the necessary components to the formula for the liberation of Crimea.”

Earlier, Ukrainian officials reported that at least three Ukrainian civilians were killed and 23 wounded by Russian shelling in the last 24 hours, including an attack not far from the Russianoccupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

The Russians fired over 120 rockets at the town of Nikopol, across the Dnieper River from the plant, Dnipropetrovsk Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said, adding that several apartment buildings and industrial sites were damaged.

Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of shelling the power station, Europe’s biggest nuclear plant, stoking international fears of a catastrophe.

Oleksandr Starukh, governor of the region where the plant is located, said on Tuesday that radiation levels were normal, but warned that an accident could spread radiation whichever way the wind blew, carrying it to Moscow and other Russian cities.