Blasts reported behind Russian lines in Ukraine, and inside Russia
By Marc Santora
KYIV — A series of explosions rocked ammunition depots and other sites deep in Russian-held territory overnight into Friday (19), including in the strategically important Crimean Peninsula, as Ukraine appeared to step up its campaign to degrade Moscow’s combat capabilities. A large blast at an ammunition depot was also reported within Russia itself, in the border city of Belgorod, and was strong enough to require the evacuation of two villages.
In several cases, Russian officials acknowledged that sites had been hit but did not reveal the extent of the damage and said they were investigating the causes.
For all of the recent flurry of high-profile strikes and damage being inflicted, there was no major movement to reclaim land, and Russia has showed a deep capacity to absorb heavy losses and fight on.
The Ukrainians had previously been somewhat circumspect about their involvement in a series of behind-enemy-lines attacks in Crimea, but on Friday a senior Ukrainian security official said that Kyiv would target sites there as part of a “step-by-step demilitarization of the peninsula with its subsequent de-occupation”.
The official, Oleksiy Danilov, head of Ukraine’s national security council, said that Crimea was a sovereign territory of Ukraine and that there was an ongoing effort to liberate it. It was the highest-level acknowledgment that the growing number of strikes in Crimea were part of a coordinated Ukrainian military campaign.
While the prospect of driving Russians from Crimea is a distant one, Ukraine is trying to undermine what has been a vital link in the logistical chain of the Russian war machine.
The Crimean Peninsula, which Russia has controlled since 2014, was a key staging ground for the invasion of Ukraine six months ago and is a vital link in Moscow’s supply chain for troops occupying southern Ukraine. It is also home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet and over the past eight years has been increasingly militarized by Moscow.
Danilov, who did not claim Ukrainian credit for individual strikes, urged people living in Crimea to provide Ukraine’s military with critical information about Russian military equipment placement and troop movements. But after eight years of exposure to Russian propaganda and with many pro-Ukraine residents having fled, it remained unclear whether the government in Kyiv could inspire local resistance.
The explosions overnight into Friday included blasts at a military airfield outside Sevastopol, the largest city in Crimea. Loud bangs were also reported above the Kerch Strait bridge, the only land link connecting Russia to Crimea. There appeared to be no damage to the bridge, but a Crimean official said that an incident had triggered the air defence systems around the vital span.
The episodes came amid a marked increase in reports of explosions overnight elsewhere — not all independently verifiable — on key Russian targets, including in Belgorod. There were also reports of strikes on ammunition depots and vital infrastructure in Russian-occupied territories of eastern and southern Ukraine. The extent of the damage in each of the incidents was not immediately clear.
Top Ukrainian military commanders have said that their counteroffensive to reclaim lost territory would not look like the Russian offensive, which has relied on heavy artillery fire to tear a path of devastation to grind out slow and bloody gains. The Ukrainians know the old Soviet playbooks, they say, and are not playing by them.
In practice, the Ukrainian strategy could be seen in the breadth and depth of the targets it struck overnight. Even if the extent of the damage to the Russia’s combat capabilities was not clear, the Ukrainians sought to show once again that they can launch strikes that cut deep into Russian logistical operations and troop morale.
Even before the overnight assault, the Ukrainian military’s intelligence agency reported that Moscow was moving some of its combat aircraft to the Russian Federation and deep into the Crimean Peninsula. The claims could not be independently confirmed.
-New York Times
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