Slowly but methodically, Ukraine is chipping away at Russia’s firepower in the peninsula
missiles smashed into the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea fleet before noon on September 22nd. This time, there could be no cover-up. After a Ukrainian attack on a nearby command post two days earlier, censors had scrubbed most social-media posts written by locals. But the daytime strike in central Sevastopol, timed to coincide with a meeting of senior generals, was impossible to hush up. Local chatrooms buzzed with gossip. “Day 576 of a three-day war to take Kyiv,” read one.
Ukrainian military sources say the operations are not necessarily ends in themselves. They should rather be seen as auxiliaries to two more important efforts. The first is Ukraine’s ongoing land counter-offensive, focused on the Zaporizhia region to the north-east of Crimea. Any Ukrainian success in degrading air power, railways and logistics, they say, undermines the Russian troops there who are directly supplied from the peninsula.
Ukraine’s economy rests on the success of a new sea corridor in and out of Odessa, announced in August in the wake of Russia’s refusal to extend a. The safety of the route, which hugs the shoreline inside Ukrainian territorial waters, depends on two things: a bet that Russia will not target civilian ships sailing under neutral flags; and a viable threat of retaliation should that not prove enough.
Ukraine’s strategists have consistently identified Crimea as Russia’s Achilles heel: crucial to its ability to project power and hold on to occupied territories, but vulnerable to being cut off. An article co-written in September 2022 by Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Valery Zaluzhny, highlighted the need to make “feelings [of discomfort in Crimea] more acute, natural and tangible.” New circumstances have added urgency to that aim.
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