Ukraine is squeezing Crimea with its new drones, forcing the Russian stronghold to cut fuel supplies

• Ukraine wants to use new drones to separate Russia from its key southern stronghold of Crimea.

• The peninsula announced its most severe fuel cuts yet following deadly attacks over the weekend.

• Ferry services and street lighting were also cut off for two days in Sevastopol.

Ukraine is trying to isolate Crimea more than 70 miles away with new drones, and new fuel cuts on the peninsula show the campaign is paying off.

Crimea’s Russian-appointed governor, Sergei Aksyonov, said on Sunday. annexed peninsula Public fuel sales will be stopped completely.

“The fuel will be sold only to state institutions that ensure the functioning and security of the Republic of Crimea,” Aksyonov said in a statement. he said.

The new decision is the harshest yet among the latest restrictions on the peninsula, which has been a regional stronghold for supporting Russia’s troops in southern Ukraine’s Zaporozhye and Kherson regions.

Crimea gradually tightened fuel access, pegging sales to 5.2-gallon servings in late May and then suspending the issuance of new coupons for those rations in early June. In those weeks hundreds Ukrainian medium-range unmanned aerial vehiclesA new class of fixed-wing uncrewed ships designed to fly 30 to 300 km, hitting highways, bridges and ports connecting Crimea to the mainland.

Local authorities in Sevastopol, a city with a population of 580,000 that hosts Russia’s important military bases, announced that they will impose an evening curfew on public transportation, retail sales and food services on Sunday.

The city’s governor, Mikhail Razvozhaev, said street lighting would be turned off for two days, adding that the outages were “due to recent events on the peninsula and the need to quickly adjust logistics.”

After the connection, sea ferry services that the peninsula relies on bridges damaged Drone strikes were also suspended after Ukraine attacked the Kerch Strait, the waterway between Crimea and Russia’s Krasnodar region.

An oil depot along the strait was also attacked, according to local reports and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who confirmed the attacks on Sunday.

The strikes have been deadly, and local authorities have reported at least five people killed in the latest attacks. Russia shot down 239 Ukrainian drones overnight, the defense ministry said on Sunday.

Ukraine’s new priority target

Ukrainian commanders say the drone strikes are part of a concerted effort by Kiev to encircle Crimea.

“We will create conditions that will make it extremely difficult for any military personnel or defense industry workers to stay in Crimea, in temporarily occupied areas or use access roads to them,” Major Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, commander of Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces, told Reuters on June 11.

Ukrainian defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov echoed the same sentiment on Wednesday.

“In fact, Crimea is being isolated by drones. And it looks like Crimea will turn into an island in the near future,” he told local media.

If Ukraine successfully isolates Crimea, it will be difficult for Russia to maintain the flow of logistics and troops to Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. An alternative logistics route, R-280 highwayIt extends northward along the coast of the Sea of ​​Azov and connects its southern front with Russia’s Rostov-on-Don region.

Ukraine also uses medium-range drones to harass highways, destroy Russian air defenses and supply trucks.

Brovdi told Reuters that traffic on the highway had slowed by more than 70 percent since the drone attacks began.

These drones played a key role Ukraine’s new strategy Targeting Russian logistics in the rear. Equipped with heavier payloads and electronic warfare countermeasures, these missiles thwart Russia’s chosen method of warfare, which floods the front lines to gain material and troop advantage over Ukraine.

“We’re actually quite optimistic that Ukraine will have significant dominance momentum going into the summer,” George Barros, Director of Innovation and Open Source Commerce at the Institute for the Study of War, previously told Business Insider.

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