A fire in a military facility in Crimea, and America announces Kyiv's progress in its counterattack

 Following a fire that broke out at a military training facility in Crimea, which prompted the pro-Russian authorities to evacuate more than 2,000 residents, Ukraine said on Wednesday that it has initiated a "successful operation."

According to Kirillo Budanov, director of military intelligence for Ukraine, their forces "launched a successful operation in occupied Crimea. The enemy hides the size of the damage and the number of casualties."

He connected his statement to a brief video clip of a burning building, but it was impossible to identify the building in the footage.

Sergei Aksionov, the governor of Crimea, claimed that an air base in the peninsula's Kirovsky area caught fire.

The highway connecting the cities of Sevastopol and Simferopol in the Kerch region, where the Crimean Bridge is located, was shut down owing to the fire, he continued, adding that the local authorities had started evacuating roughly 2000 people from four towns near the military post.

Additionally, the military base in the Kirovsky region is still experiencing explosions, according to Crimean officials, who added that it will take a day or two to put out the fire.

A drone strike by Ukraine on targets in Crimea was prevented, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense, which claimed that it was a "terrorist" attack.

According to the ministry, its air defenses last night intercepted 17 drones and used electronic warfare to bring down 11 more without inflicting any casualties.

The important Crimean bridge was allegedly the target of two drone boat attacks, according to the Ukrainian army. The pro-Russian Donetsk authorities lifted the nighttime curfew after the attack on the bridge linking the peninsula with Russia's Krasnodar region, allowing vehicles to enter Crimea through Mariupol and Melitopol.

In the same vein, the Ukrainian Air Force reported that 32 Iranian "Shahid" drones had recently targeted Ukrainian territory.

It added that the missile and aircraft strikes targeted military equipment and sites in Odesa and other regions and that Russian forces had launched "Caliber" missiles from the Black Sea against Ukrainian territory, including Odesa.

The governor of the Odesa region, Oleg Kipper, stated that the Ukrainian air defense systems responded early on Wednesday in response to a Russian air attack on the port of Odesa in southern Ukraine for the second night in a row.

The eastern part of Ukraine was filled with the sound of air raid sirens as we awoke on Wednesday. The strikes were later acknowledged by the Moscow Defense Ministry.

The Russian Ministry of Defense, for its part, reported that during attacks initiated near Kobyansk, a crucial railway intersection in Kharkiv (northeast), close to the border with Donetsk Province in eastern Ukraine, their forces advanced by nearly two kilometers.

According to Russian media, Russian soldiers broke through the Ukrainian army's lines to seize control of the village of "Novo-Silovskoye" in the Kobyansk-Kharkiv axis.

General Oleksandr Sersky, the commander of the Ukrainian ground forces, stated earlier today that Russia has focused its forces in the Kobyansk region and described the situation on the eastern front as complex but under control.

According to Sergei Chervaty, the spokesman for the Eastern Operations Command of the Ukrainian military, Russia has deployed around 100,000 soldiers and 900 tanks in the Liman axis of Donetsk and Kobyansk-Baharkiv.

In a related development, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin reaffirmed that his nation would make every effort to supply Ukraine with air defense systems and munitions.

During a joint press conference with Mark Milley, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Austin added that Moscow is suffering growing losses while Kyiv is making headway in its response.

Mark Milley noted that the training given to the Ukrainian army by the United States assisted in creating leaders and units that have an impact on the battlefield.

In response, the US representative to the UN, Linda Thomas Greenfield, claimed that Russia had been using cluster bombs and asserted that Washington would help Ukraine until it had defeated the Russians.