Ukraine: Attacks on Crimea signal a third phase of the war, August 2022
Since the end of July, a series of attacks, both large and small, have been reported on Russian military facilities across Crimea.
The most spectacular were two large explosions at a Russian airbase near Saky on August 9th, followed a week later by the detonation ammunition depot at Dzankoy, further north. Before and after this, smaller-scale drone attacks have been reported on the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.
Ukraine has not explicitly admitted responsibility of these actions, and it is not clear how all of them were achieved—whether by Ukrainian special forces, local resistance groups or long-range missiles—and, at first, Russia tried to play down their military significance, attributing some to negligence. However, alongside a broader switch in Ukrainian tactics over the same period, permitted by the supply of more modern long-range rocket artillery systems by Ukraine’s Western backers, the events in Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, underscore Ukraine’s ability to conduct operations far behind Russian front lines. Oleksiy Reznikov, Ukraine’s defence minister, has explained this attempt to weaken Russian front lines, and especially to isolate a large cohort of Russian troops on the west bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson region, ahead of a planned counteroffensive there, as Ukraine’s response to Russia’s main military tactic of amassing artillery fire to demolish urban areas, not least to avoid protracted urban warfare.
Aside from the destruction of two large ammunition warehouses, and damaging an important transport junction, the most direct military significance of the attacks on Crimea have been the destruction of eight or nine fighter aircraft of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and the forced redeployment further back of some military support facilities. However, at least as important as the direct military impact of the recent attacks on Crimea, which is probably quite small, is their symbolic and psychological importance, potentially feeding into military outcomes through the differential effect on the morale of the two protagonists. That is, demonstration of its ability to strike at Russian forces in an area taken by force in 2014, and presumed by the Russian authorities as relatively safe, has given the Ukrainian side a definite morale boost. Meanwhile, the outflow of Russian tourists and colonists from Crimea back to Russia, causing traffic jams over the Kerch Bridge, constructed to connect Crimea to the Russian mainland following its annexation, shows the opposite affect, at least among Russia’s civilian population, many of whom have largely been shielded from a realistic understanding of the war owing to the Russian authorities’ tight control over information flows.
On the one hand, Ukraine’s new tactics seem to have degraded the ability of the Russian military to advance, at least without a temporary halt to hostilities to replenish arms and personnel. On the other hand, Ukraine, like Russia, is likely already to have lost a large number of its most experienced troops, so that it is not clear whether it has sufficient people and resources to make good on its plan to retake Kherson before winter.
The most spectacular were two large explosions at a Russian airbase near Saky on August 9th, followed a week later by the detonation ammunition depot at Dzankoy, further north. Before and after this, smaller-scale drone attacks have been reported on the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.
Ukraine has not explicitly admitted responsibility of these actions, and it is not clear how all of them were achieved—whether by Ukrainian special forces, local resistance groups or long-range missiles—and, at first, Russia tried to play down their military significance, attributing some to negligence. However, alongside a broader switch in Ukrainian tactics over the same period, permitted by the supply of more modern long-range rocket artillery systems by Ukraine’s Western backers, the events in Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, underscore Ukraine’s ability to conduct operations far behind Russian front lines. Oleksiy Reznikov, Ukraine’s defence minister, has explained this attempt to weaken Russian front lines, and especially to isolate a large cohort of Russian troops on the west bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson region, ahead of a planned counteroffensive there, as Ukraine’s response to Russia’s main military tactic of amassing artillery fire to demolish urban areas, not least to avoid protracted urban warfare.
Aside from the destruction of two large ammunition warehouses, and damaging an important transport junction, the most direct military significance of the attacks on Crimea have been the destruction of eight or nine fighter aircraft of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and the forced redeployment further back of some military support facilities. However, at least as important as the direct military impact of the recent attacks on Crimea, which is probably quite small, is their symbolic and psychological importance, potentially feeding into military outcomes through the differential effect on the morale of the two protagonists. That is, demonstration of its ability to strike at Russian forces in an area taken by force in 2014, and presumed by the Russian authorities as relatively safe, has given the Ukrainian side a definite morale boost. Meanwhile, the outflow of Russian tourists and colonists from Crimea back to Russia, causing traffic jams over the Kerch Bridge, constructed to connect Crimea to the Russian mainland following its annexation, shows the opposite affect, at least among Russia’s civilian population, many of whom have largely been shielded from a realistic understanding of the war owing to the Russian authorities’ tight control over information flows.
On the one hand, Ukraine’s new tactics seem to have degraded the ability of the Russian military to advance, at least without a temporary halt to hostilities to replenish arms and personnel. On the other hand, Ukraine, like Russia, is likely already to have lost a large number of its most experienced troops, so that it is not clear whether it has sufficient people and resources to make good on its plan to retake Kherson before winter.
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