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Ukraine said a barrage of missiles it rained down on the headquarters of Russia's Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, in occupied Crimea, last week killed numerous high-ranking Russian military officials - including the fleet's commander, Adm. Viktor Sokolov.
In refutation of that claim, Russia's Defense Ministry on Tuesday released footage that appeared to show Sokolov alive, attending by video link a meeting chaired by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
The Washington Post did not detect any signs of obvious manipulation in the video but could not independently verify its authenticity.
In response to the video, Ukraine's special operations forces released a statement saying that 34 Russian officers were killed as a result of the strike but that it would seek more information about whether Sokolov was among them.
"Since the Russians were urgently forced to publish an answer with an apparently alive Sokolov, our units are clarifying the information," the statement, posted on Telegram, continued. The Kremlin had at first declined to comment on whether Sokolov was alive or dead, saying all such information should come from the Defense Ministry.
Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence, its top spy agency, declined to comment.
In the unverified video released by Russia's Defense Ministry, Sokolov is shown in uniform, but he does not speak.
A digital clock in the video displays a time just past 11 a.m. on Sept. 26.
Beyond the fate of Sokolov, Ukraine's Sept. 22 strike on the Black Sea Fleet's headquarters in Sevastopol has been the subject of competing claims by Kyiv and Moscow. Russia initially said its air defenses had downed all the missiles fired at the site.
Ukrainian officials mocked those claims, while a video posted to social media on the day of the strike, verified by Storyful and confirmed by The Post, showed smoke rising from the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet.
Commercial satellite imagery also showed large amounts of smoke coming from near the headquarters after the strikes.
The success of the strike on Sevastopol is an embarrassing failure for Russian air defenses. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia maintained its Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol under a lease agreement with the newly independent Ukraine. In 2014, Russia invaded and illegally annexed the peninsula.
After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, Crimea emerged as a key military staging ground. Ukraine has made recapturing it a top aim of the conflict, with some officials arguing that the country could never be safe with in Russian control.
Ukraine has made a number of significant attacks on Crimea over recent months, often targeting the Black Sea Fleet.
Rumors of Sokolov's death had circulated online among pro-Ukrainian forces shortly after the strike. In an interview with the Ukrainian-language service of Voice of America, a broadcaster owned by the U.S. government, Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov declined to confirm the reports about Sokolov's death.
However, he did say that several Russian military leaders were injured in the strike. One, Colonel General Alexander Romanchuk, was in a "very serious condition," according to Budanov.
Romanchuk, former head of a prestigious military academy in Moscow, is a key figure in the Russian defense of Ukraine's ongoing counteroffensive in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia.
On Monday, Ukraine's special operations forces wrote on Telegram that the strike on Sevastopol had killed Sokolov and 33 other officers. In a report that evening, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said it could not see any confirmation of the news but added that "Russian command would be able to easily disprove Ukrainian reporting if these reports are false."
"Sokolov's and other Russian officers' reported deaths would create significant disruptions in command and control in the Russian Black Sea Fleet," the report continued.