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Ukraine Defies Russia With Attacks on Crimea, a ‘Holy Land’ to Putin [1]
['Anton Troianovski', 'Maciek Nabrdalik', 'Mauricio Lima', 'Emile Ducke']
Date: 2022-08-16
Image Ukrainian forces have launched several strikes in Crimea in recent weeks, despite strong Russian threats against attacks on the territory. Credit... Reuters
A series of brazen attacks on Russian-occupied Crimea by Ukraine in recent days — the latest on Tuesday by an elite military unit operating behind enemy lines — come in defiance of dire warnings of retaliation from Moscow. A senior Russian official vowed last month that if Ukraine attacked Crimea, it would immediately face “Judgment Day.”
The Black Sea peninsula, which Russia illegally seized in 2014, is more than a crucial military base and staging ground for its invasion of Ukraine. It holds special meaning for President Vladimir V. Putin, who has told his people that Crimea is a “sacred place” and Russia’s “holy land.” And by repeatedly striking at the territory, Ukraine has posed a fresh challenge to Mr. Putin’s standing at home.
On Tuesday, huge explosions rocked a Russian ammunition depot there, as Ukraine tries to counter Moscow’s advantages in matériel and disrupt supply lines by ratcheting up its military tactics and striking deep behind the front. Last week, blasts at a military airfield in Crimea sent beachgoers rushing for cover, and an attack by a makeshift drone in the port city of Sevastopol on July 31 forced Russia to cancel its Navy Day celebrations.
A senior Ukrainian official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss Tuesday’s operation, said that an elite unit was responsible for the explosions. Russia’s Defense Ministry called the blasts an “act of sabotage” — a significant acknowledgment that the war is spreading to what the Kremlin considers Russian territory.
Some pro-Kremlin commentators called on Russia’s military to make good on the threats to respond harshly to attacks on Crimea. Andrei Klishas, a senior lawmaker from Mr. Putin’s United Russia party, said in a social media post that “Russia’s retaliatory strikes must be very convincing.”
“This is about protecting our sovereignty,” he wrote.
Ukrainian officials did not publicly claim responsibility for Tuesday’s blasts, although President Volodymyr Zelensky praised those helping Ukraine’s intelligence apparatus and “special services” weaken the Russian military.
“The reasons for the explosions in the occupied territory can be different, very different,” he said in his nightly address, but noted that the result is the same: damage to Russia’s military infrastructure.
Mr. Zelensky said people in Crimea now choosing to leave for Russia “already understand or at least feel that Crimea is not a place for them.”
No single action that Mr. Putin has taken in his 22-year rule provoked as much pro-Kremlin Russian euphoria as his largely bloodless annexation of Crimea, which cemented his domestic image as a leader resurrecting Russia as a great power. And last winter, it was Crimea that Mr. Putin repeatedly cited as the locus of an existential security threat posed by Ukraine, warning that a Western-backed effort to retake the peninsula by force could trigger a direct war between Russia and NATO.
When Mr. Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Russian forces lunged north from Crimea, capturing a large swath of territory in southern Ukraine, including the Kherson region. Russia is now using Crimea to provide air and logistical support to its forces there and in the neighboring Zaporizhzhia region, where Ukraine has been attacking Russian supply lines and threatening a counteroffensive.
Pavel Luzin, an independent Russian military analyst, said that Ukraine’s attacks were limiting Russia’s ability to “seize the initiative.”
“Crimea is the only way to support the grouping of troops in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions,” he said. “Otherwise, this grouping of troops does not exist.”
Crimea is also the base of operations for the Russian Navy, which has begun to struggle to keep control of the Black Sea, the British Defense Intelligence service said in its latest assessment on Tuesday. Following Russia’s loss of its Black Sea flagship, the Moskva, it has demonstrated only “limited effectiveness” and has kept its patrols within sight of the Crimean coast, while continuing to fire long-range missiles at the mainland.
Mr. Putin, who addressed a security conference in Moscow by video link on Tuesday a few hours after the blasts in Crimea, made no mention of the attack. Instead, he reiterated that a Western-allied Ukraine posed an existential threat to Russia.
Russia, he said, was prepared for a lengthy war.
[END]
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/08/16/world/ukraine-russia-news-war
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