The thick plumes of black smoke that swirled over an air base in Crimea sent scores of sun-seekers running from the Russia-occupied peninsula, clogging traffic on the highway leading to the only bridge to their homeland.
Ukrainian officials retweeted the videos of panicked Russian tourists racing for the exits. One assessed that nine Russian fighter jets had been destroyed in the incident on Tuesday evening. But they did not go as far as take credit for the damage inflicted on the Saki Air Base, some 200km from the nearest known Ukrainian position.
“Smoking cigarettes kills,” a senior Ukrainian official wrote in a tongue-in-cheek text soon after the explosions.