Two attacks recently targeting Russian military installations in Crimea show Ukraine’s ability to strike far from the front line and disrupt Russian logistics, putting Moscow under pressure eight years after the annexation of this peninsula.
The Russian army has, exceptionally, recognized that the most recent of the explosions which occurred on Tuesday in an ammunition depot near the village of Djankoï, in the north of Crimea, was the fact of an “act of sabotage”.
This explosion was preceded a week earlier by an attack targeting the military airfield of Saki, in the west of the peninsula, which a Ukrainian official on condition of anonymity described as a “well-planned special sabotage operation”. .
While kyiv has not officially acknowledged its responsibility for these two attacks, the presidential adviser Mikhaïlo Podoliak evoked a “demilitarization in action” of Crimea, a reference to the terminology used by Russia to justify its invasion of Ukraine triggered on February 24.
Other officials such as Defense Minister Oleksiï Reznikov preferred to be ironic, suggesting that these explosions had been the result of poorly extinguished cigarettes, a joke that has gone viral in Ukraine.
For Danish analyst Oliver Alexander, these explosions, which could in fact be due to ballistic missile strikes, have dealt a blow to the morale of the Russian army while restoring confidence in the Ukrainian camp, in the sixth month of the war.
“Crimea had been relatively spared, but this is no longer the case. This puts pressure on the Russians,” he told AFP.
The attacks have caused panic among many tourists in Crimea, a popular summer destination for Russians, while Ukraine on Wednesday threatened to “dismantle” the Kerch Bridge that connects mainland Russia to the peninsula, opened in 2018 after ultra-fast and expensive construction.
“Coherent” counter-offensive
The American Institute for the Study of War (ISW), headquartered in Washington, explains for its part that the explosion on Tuesday occurred in a major logistics center of the Russian army used for the supply of his units occupying southern Ukraine.
According to the ISW, the attacks of the last two weeks are part of a “coherent counter-offensive” by Ukrainian forces in this region, where they aim to push the Russians back beyond the Dnieper, the great river which the crossing.
“Russian logistical axes from Crimea directly support Russian forces in mainland Ukraine, including those in the Kherson region”, which Moscow has occupied since the first weeks of the war and which Kyiv has set itself the goal of retaking , adds the ISW.
For weeks, Ukraine has claimed to be carrying out a counter-offensive in the Kherson region, having enabled it to reconquer dozens of villages. More recently, she claimed to have decommissioned several strategic bridges.
On Wednesday, Ivan Fedorov, the pro-Ukrainian mayor of the occupied city of Melitopol, not far from Crimea, meanwhile revealed that two explosions had interrupted the TV signal from Russia.
The British Ministry of Defense finally estimated that the Russian commanders were most likely “increasingly worried about the apparent deterioration of the security situation in Crimea, which serves as a rear base for the occupation” of Ukraine.
Crimea was annexed in March 2014, after an intervention by Russian special forces and a referendum denounced as illegal by kyiv and the West.
In the early days of the war, Russian troops attacked from this peninsula in particular, quickly conquering large swaths of territory in southern Ukraine while having less success elsewhere.
With the war set to last, pushing Moscow’s forces back to their original positions is no longer enough for many Ukrainians, who are calling for the recapture of all occupied territories, including Crimea.
In his daily message on Tuesday, President Volodymyr Zelensky assured that queues of cars had formed on the peninsula to reach Russia. Russian citizens “are starting to understand that they don’t belong in Crimea”, he said.