Ukraine War
This week saw dazzling Ukrainian attacks at the Crimean Peninsula, hitting Russian warships and missiles.
Estimates of the damage finished ran into billions of pounds and raised the query: is Ukraine getting ready to retake Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014?
Crimea is a Russian citadel, so it’s far critical now not to get over excited.
“The method has two essential desires,” says Oleksandr Musiienko, from Kyiv’s Centre for army and legal research.
“to establish dominance within the north-western Black Sea and to weaken Russian logistical possibilities for their defence traces inside the south, near Tokmak and Melitopol.”
In different words, operations in Crimea go hand-in-glove with Ukraine’s counter-offensive inside the south.
“They depend upon each other,” Musiienko says.
permit’s examine Ukraine’s recent successes in Crimea.
On Wednesday, long-variety cruise missiles, supplied by using the UK and France, dealt a heavy blow to Russia’s a whole lot-vaunted Black Sea fleet at its domestic port of Sevastopol.
satellite images of the scene on the Sevmorzavod dry dock repair facility showed blackened vessels.
Manage the spinned words as you want..
On Friday, Britain’s Ministry of Defence stated a large amphibious touchdown deliver, the Minsk, had “nearly without a doubt been functionally destroyed”.
subsequent to it, considered one of Russia’s Kilo magnificence diesel-electric powered submarines, the Rostov-on-Don – used to release Kalibr cruise missiles masses of miles into Ukraine – had “possibly suffered catastrophic damage”.
perhaps similarly importantly the dry docks – vital for preservation of the complete Black Sea fleet – could probably be out of use “for plenty months”, the ministry said.
On Saturday, Ukraine supplied tantalising new details.
It said unique forces had performed a key role, using boats and an unspecified “underwater transport approach” to get ashore, earlier than using “special technical property” to help perceive and goal the vessels.
Russian air defence device destroyed in Crimea
Ukraine launches missile assault on Crimea
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however with the fires slightly out in Sevastopol there were extra dramatic night-time explosions as Ukraine blew up one in every of Russia’s maximum modern-day air defence systems, an S-four hundred, around 40 miles (64km) north at Yevpatoria.
This became another state-of-the-art operation that used a mixture of drones and Ukrainian-made Neptune missiles to confuse and wreck a key issue of Russia’s air defences at the Crimean Peninsula.
A massive side note: Russian tries to apply precisely this approach over Kyiv have usually failed, largely thanks to the presence of us Patriot interceptor missiles.
Thursday become the second one time in much less than a month that Ukraine has knocked out an S-four hundred surface-to-air missile machine at the peninsula.
On 23 August, at Olenivka, at the western tip of the Tarkhankut Peninsula, Ukraine controlled to wreck another launcher and a close-by radar station.
Russia was idea to have no longer more than six S-four hundred launchers in Crimea. Now it has misplaced two.
however those are just a few of Ukraine’s current operations.
Others have knocked out Russian radar positions on offshore gas platforms and, according to Kyiv, used experimental maritime drones to attack a hovercraft missile carrier at the entrance to Sevastopol harbour.
With its airbases, troop concentrations, training grounds and the Black Sea fleet, Crimea has been a key target since Russia’s full-scale invasion last year.
“In Crimea, they still have a lot of stockpiles, with artillery shells and other types of weapons,” Musiienko says. “And this is the main logistic supply line for them.”
Over the months, Kyiv’s operations have grown in sophistication, from a drone attack in August 2022 which destroyed an estimated nine Russian aircraft at the Saky air base, to the combined drone and missile attacks of today.
With more advanced weapons thought to be in the pipeline, Musiienko expects Ukraine to launch ever more sophisticated operations.
“When we get ATACMS (tactical ballistic missiles) from the United States, I think we will try to use – in one attack – ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and also drones,” he says.
“And that will be a serious problem for Russia’s air defence system,” he adds.
“We will try to blind them.”
Each successful attack, he says, makes the next one easier. “We are clearing the way, and it’s becoming more simple.”
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The latest reports from Washington suggests the Biden administration is close to approving the ATACMS long range missile system after months of Ukrainian lobbying.
Does any of this mean that Kyiv is getting closer to its goal of liberating Crimea?
“It’s getting closer, but there’s still a lot to do,” says retired Ukrainian navy captain Andriy Ryzhenko.
“We need to liberate the Sea of Azov coast and cut the land corridor,” he says, referring to Ukraine’s slow, grinding offensive in the south.
And then there is the Kerch Bridge.
Ukraine has been hitting Moscow’s lifeline to Crimea for almost a year, but Russian heavy equipment still moves along its vital railway.
Despite being much better defended now, it remains very much in Kyiv’s sights.