how Crimea became one of the most active fronts in the conflict

kyiv says it shot down two Russian planes over the Sea of ​​Azov on Monday. And according to Ukrainian analysts met by franceinfo, numerous Russian installations have been destroyed in Crimea in recent weeks.

The west coast of Crimea is now within range of weapons positioned in mainland Ukraine. The east coast, closest to Russia, is more difficult to access meven if the attacks have increased in strength recently, explains Andrii Krimenko, analyst specializing in the peninsula. “Last year, the armed forces of Ukraine attacked at least 184 Russian military installations on the territory of Crimea,” he assures.

Volodymyr Zelensky’s army claimed on Monday January 15 to have destroyed two Russian planes over the Azov Sea, which Moscow is supposed to control. A hard blow for Russia, a masterstroke for Ukraine which shows once again that Crimea, under Russian occupation for 10 years, has become an increasingly active war front.

Resistance fighters and informants on the Russian side

Precise information on actions targeting Russian military equipment is difficult to gather in Crimea. Internet providers’ servers are under the control of the FSB, a Russian intelligence service, successor to the Soviet KGB. In the region, speech is anything but free. But Andrii Krimenko cannot say more: he waits “victory”as he says, to tell us how he was able to collect all this data.

His colleague Rouslan Sidorenko, also a Crimean analyst, is much less cautious: yes, there are resistance fighters and informers. “Sometimes it happens that in the morning, our informants send us informationhe says. In the afternoon, the target was hit. And in the evening our informants tell us ‘oh great and thank you’. They send us all the data about geolocation, what to find and where to find it. When it happened and where it’s stored.”

It’s even one of the unspoken rules of war: it ends where it began. And for Ukrainians, it’s in Crimea.