Russia’s Defense Ministry announced that air defenses on the Crimean peninsula “detected and destroyed” two Ukrainian S-200 missiles, preventing two attacks launched by Kiev four hours apart, yesterday Saturday.

The Reuters news agency emphasizes that it is unable to verify the reports of the Russian Defense Ministry, which did not specify in which areas of Crimea the missiles were shot down. Russia illegally annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014.

At 10:25 p.m. Saturday, Ukrainian radio and television broadcast a testimony of a resident of Crimea about two loud explosions heard in the Yevtaporiya region, in the western part of the peninsula. Earlier, images were broadcast showing a plume of smoke rising into the sky in the Dzhankoy (north) region, accompanied by reports of explosions.

The Russian Defense Ministry made two identical posts on the Telegram platform, in which it reported an “attempted terrorist attack” from Kiev, at 6:00 p.m. and at 10 p.m., with an S-200 missile. In both cases, it was emphasized that “Russian air defense systems detected and destroyed the Ukrainian missile in the air in time”