Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign is bleeding Crimea dry

 The narrow strip of sand stretching six miles into the northern part of the Black Sea may not seem like the most strategic military prize.

Yet Kinburn Spit has been a thorn in Ukraine’s side since the hook-shaped peninsula was captured by Russian soldiers four months after the full-scale invasion began in 2022.

Guarding the mouth of the Dnipro river, the former spa resort proved to be the perfect staging post for Moscow’s forces.

It allowed Russia to sentinel routes to the Mykolaiv and Kherson ports, safeguard its troops in occupied Crimea and dig its heels in with frequent missile and artillery attacks on Ukrainian positions nearby.

Despite multiple raids by Ukraine, recapturing the spit appeared a distant prospect.

Now that may be changing, in what could be one of the most significant developments of the war this year.

Russian units are being forced to abandon their positions owing to severed supply lines, according to Atesh, the Crimea-based Ukrainian partisan movement.

The change is likely to stem from a campaign of Ukrainian intermediate-range strikes against Russian ground lines of communication in the occupied territories, particularly in the Kherson region, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

The Washington-based think tank claimed that Kyiv’s mid-range campaign “appears to be generating battlefield effects which will likely continue to mature in the near future”.

Ukraine has targeted fuel depots, vital transport arteries, command posts and ammunition dumps in its increasingly forceful crusade against Russia’s assets located between 20 miles and 110 miles behind the front lines.

It almost quadrupled the average number of monthly intermediate-range strikes between January and April this year, from 41 to 160.

Videos have shown strikes on Russian freight trains, cargo ships, ammo depots and vital bridges, putting pressure on supply lines.

The effort has forced Russian units to push back their logistics, sometimes beyond 75 miles from the front line, impeding their capacity to support offensive operations at scale.

It also choked supply chains for front-line troops while weakening air defences, exposing vulnerabilities that have enabled more frequent and ambitious attacks deep inside Russian territory.

In a series of strikes aimed at cutting off Russia’s access to occupied Crimea, Ukraine brought a vital logistics highway from southern Russia via Mariupol to the occupied Black Sea peninsula to its knees.

On Tuesday morning, its drones once again knocked out access to the Chonhar Bridge, a critical route which connects Crimea to mainland Ukraine and is often used by Russian forces to transport personnel and supplies.

Russian-appointed authorities banned cash sales of petrol on June 4, while strict 20-litre rations were imposed that must be accessed via increasingly scarce coupons.

‘All that’s left is to buy a horse’

“Just six months ago, petrol was available at all gas stations without having to queue,” one Simferopol resident told Bereg, an independent Russian news website.

“Now, only those with coupons can get fuel and even they face a ton of restrictions.”

Another said: “People have started stocking up not only on petrol, but on food. I saw people literally clearing grocery shelves. I myself now walk to work. All that’s left is to buy a horse!”

Russian tourists have left Crimea in droves, with hotel reservations contracting by nearly a third year on year for the period from May 24 to June 6. Agentstvo reported that basic food products such as rice, pasta and buckwheat were also rapidly disappearing from the shelves.

Fuel shortages have also spread to some 14 Russian regions, according to estimates from 7x7, a Russian media project, while prices have climbed by 5 per cent since the start of this year.

The Kremlin has attempted to turn a blind eye to the escalating crisis, but late on Monday, Russia’s energy ministry finally conceded that “fuel and energy sector enterprises have faced an uptick in enemy aerial attacks, leading to temporary difficulties with fuel supplies”.

For Moscow, the slow strangulation of Crimea is likely to carry a particular sting, argued Sir Ben Wallace, the former defence secretary.

“We’ve always got to remember what drives [Vladimir] Putin is ego and history, it’s not rational thought. It’s clear that if you want to get Putin to the table, you have to get him to believe he has something to lose,” he told The Telegraph.

“I’ve suggested, in public and privately, that if you make Crimea unviable for the Russians to keep occupying it the way they do, for it to be a viable piece of territory, he will care about that to the extent that he may come to realise that he’s got something to lose.”

Although the US-made Hornet drone, a semi-autonomous 200km-range drone with a five kilogram warhead, has been decisive, the 412th Nemesis Brigade last week unveiled the formerly covert, domestically-produced Morrigan drone which has been used to pummel the R-280 logistics highway.

Ukraine has also extensively utilised its answer to the Hornet, the Darts-2 drone, as well as the Chaklun-V electronic warfare-resistant strike drone, the fixed-wing 20-50kg-warhead-carrying Bober (Beaver) and 300km-range Behemot.

This, combined with increased volume, superior intelligence and a concerted effort to hunt down air defence assets, has allowed Kyiv to clinch superiority in the skies. Its forces upped attacks on Russian air defence and electronic warfare assets by 300% in March and April, according to the Kyiv Independent.

“These kinds of cheap, relatively small fixed-wing drones that fly at a low altitude and in swarms are an aerial threat for which Russia’s armed forces weren’t prepared,” said Emil Kastehelmi, a military analyst and co-founder of the Finland-based Black Bird Group.