Russia does not even know how Ukraine attacks it

A few kilometers away, the Russian military base at Saky was reduced to dust and rubble. A series of explosions had destroyed eight Kremlin army fighters and several buildings, satellite images later revealed. The cameras, however, did not capture the origin of the explosion and, today, nobody knows for sure. neither how nor who is behind that attack.

These mysterious accidents have been repeated this Tuesday. Only seven days later east of the Crimean peninsula, near the town of Maiske, a depot of weapons and ammunition of the Russian army was blown up. Again, an explosion destroyed a military infrastructure of the troops of Putin, as well as a nearby railway line and a high-voltage power plant in the Dzhankoi region. Again, nobody knows anything.

Unsurprisingly, Russia, which has made disinformation yet another weapon in its war, has tried to downplay both attacks. The first attributed it to negligence, to “an ammunition accident“which, of course, had not caused great damage and, of course, had not affected any aircraft either. On the second, the Russian Ministry of Defense maintains that it is an “act of sabotage”. And although it does not directly indicate to Ukraine but which recognizes, for the first time, an enemy performance on the peninsula that has been a safe (and militarized) place for the Kremlin for eight years.

None of these statements is going to reduce the strong impact that these blows are having on the Russian army, which had been at a minimum for a few months (at least in terms of troops). now he’s totally baffled —and perhaps in low spirits—by these unexpected attacks in a completely unexpected place.

[Ucrania intensifica su contraofensiva sobre Jersón y se pone como objetivo recuperar Crimea]

Because although Ukraine has not officially acknowledged responsibility, everything indicates that the explosions have the stamp of the kyiv army. And not only because of the statements that its president, Volodimir Zelensky, made after August 9, when he said yes “the war started with Crimea must end with liberated Crimea“. Also because, after this latest attack, the Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak has published a tweet in which he pointed out that “the number of attacks would increase. And particularly, they will increase in Crimea.”

He previously quipped: “Let me remind you once again that the Crimea of ​​a normal country is about the Black Sea, mountains, recreation and tourism. And Crimea, occupied by Russian militants, is about warehouse explosions and the growing danger of death to invaders and thieves. Demilitarization in action”.

“Sow Chaos”

Irony has been the tone followed by the Ukrainian government since the beginning of the invasion. However, both this and the attacks on Crimea appear to be part of a complex plan aimed at “creating chaos within the Russian forces”.

At least that is how Podolyak explained it to the newspaper Guardian In an interview where he acknowledges that his strategy is to destroy logistics, supply lines and ammunition depots and other objects of military infrastructure to “sow chaos“.

“The number of attacks in Crimea will increase soon”

All this to accelerate the ambitious counteroffensive that the Ukrainian Army is carrying out in the south of the country to recapture the coastal city of Kherson, the only city controlled by the enemy on the western bank of the Dnieper River. And according to the latest updates of the Institute for the Study of Warthe troops are advancing in that direction, although they do it discreetly.

In any case, regardless of the messages sent by Zelensky’s inner circle, or even Zelensky himself, the actions speak for themselves. And the message that kyiv is sending is that his attacks can accurately hit targets located more than 200 kilometers away from the front line. The big question is how he did it.

200 km from the front

The use of high-precision missiles is one of the main hypotheses that have been considered for the attack on the Saky military airfield. And it would make all the sense in the world, if it weren’t for the only long range missiles that at least officially known to Ukraine are the HIMARS rocket launchers sent by the US and the UK that hit targets 84 km away.

However, the targets attacked on the Russian-annexed peninsula are a few hundred kilometers further away. It is possible that Soviet beetle missiles (the Tochka-U) have been appropriated, but they are still not enough, because they have a maximum range of 150 km. The one who does have a higher rank, of up to 300 km, are the ATACMS, compatible with the HIMARS missile launcher. However, the White House refused from the outset to provide these shells for fear that kyiv would attack Russian territory.

So either Ukraine has managed to get hold of this weapon thanks to unacknowledged help from allies, or it has used a “exclusively Ukrainian-made device“, as an anonymous senior military officer assured New York Times. A possibility that has not been officially confirmed and that would give Ukraine, which has been asking the West for ammunition since the beginning of the war, a military technological capacity that is as surprising as it is powerful.

Missiles ruled out, there are other options that would explain how Ukraine has managed to attack Crimea. One of them is that they have used, from a nearby area, drones of switchblade kamikaze attack, provided by the allies and with a radius of action of 100 km. Although for this they would have had to circumvent Russian control over their airspace.

The latter hypothesis is based on statements made by Ukrainian government sources to the Washington Post and who maintain that behind the attacks would be pro-ukrainian partisans attached to the special operations forces that would have achieved enough to the objectives.