In Crimea, Ukraine is beating Russia
GOOD NEWS, at last, from Ukraine. The approval in April of the Biden administration’s $61bn military-support package, after six months of Congressional delay, is having an impact. In particular, the arrival of ATACMS ballistic missiles, with a range of 300km, means that Ukraine can now hit any target in Russian-occupied Crimea, with deadly effect.
In the past two weeks the Russian offensive in the north-east on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, also appears to have lost momentum. Of potentially even greater significance, on May 30th President Joe Biden, under pressure from a growing chorus of European allies, eased the restrictions on American weapons being used against military targets on Russian soil, imposed because of fears of Russian nuclear escalation. The Ukrainians are now to be allowed to use some American kit to hit Russian forces on the other side of the border as they prepare to attack Kharkiv. It is not clear whether this includes Russian tactical aircraft launching glide-bomb attacks like the one that killed at least 18 people in a Kharkiv hardware shop on May 25th.
However, to Ukrainian exasperation, Mr Biden has still to lift his ban on hitting targets elsewhere in Russia. The effectiveness of Ukraine’s campaign in Crimea shows what can be done. According to Ben Hodges, a former commander of American forces in Europe and a senior adviser to NATO on logistics, the Ukrainians are “systematically in the process of making Crimea uninhabitable for Russian forces”.
That would be a huge prize for Ukraine. Since the reign of Catherine the Great, Russians have regarded Crimea as a military jewel. Vladimir Putin saw Crimea, linked to the Russian mainland by the Kerch Bridge since 2018, as an unsinkable aircraft-carrier. Its logistics hubs, air bases and the Black Sea Fleet, operating out of Sevastopol, could be used to dominate the south of Ukraine, close off its vital grain exports, and provide a steady flow of men and materiel to push Ukraine out of areas to the north. Mr Putin has invested huge sums in military infrastructure in Crimea, all of it now under threat.
A D-Day-style amphibious assault to liberate Crimea remains inconceivable. But, says Sir Lawrence Freedman, a British strategist, that is the wrong way to look at it. Crimea is now a weak point for Russia, which has too much there to defend. It provides the best way for Ukraine to put real pressure on Mr Putin in order to extract concessions in the future. Nico Lange, a former adviser to the German defence ministry, agrees: “Ukraine’s campaign is a mixture of a military and political strategy. Politically, [Crimea] is Russia’s most vital asset; but it is also very vulnerable.” What Ukraine is attempting to do is to make it a liability rather than an asset for Mr Putin. The aim is to isolate it, push Russian air and sea forces away from southern Ukraine and strangle it as a logistics hub.
Ukraine has already demonstrated the ability of British- and French-supplied Storm Shadow and SCALP cruise missiles and its own cleverly designed homemade maritime drones to hit Russian warships, particularly the big Ropucha landing vessels used as military transports, most of which have been destroyed. Ukrainian drones and missiles may have taken out of action as much as half of the once formidable Black Sea Fleet. Almost all of the remainder has been forced to relocate to the port of Novorossiysk, over 300km away on the Russian mainland. Novorossiysk itself came under attack from both marine and aerial drones on May 17th. A railway station and a power-generation plant as well as the naval base were hit.
But now Ukraine is using a deadly combination of ATACMS and increasingly sophisticated drones to systematically bash Russian air defences in Crimea, hit air bases and strike logistical and economic targets. Sir Lawrence says crippling Russia’s air-defence network should help Ukraine prepare for the imminent arrival of the first batches of F-16 fighter jets from Europe.
On April 17th an ATACMS strike on Dzhankoi air base in north-eastern Crimea damaged helicopters, an S-400 battery and a command-and-control centre. On May 15th a large-scale ATACMS strike on an air base at Belbek near Sevastopol destroyed four planes and an S-400 air-defence radar. Ten missiles each carrying 300 bomblets caused massive fires, possibly set off by an exploding fuel depot.
Belbek was hit again the next day, showing that Ukraine has rather more than the 100 or so ATACMS thought to have been donated. In what is becoming almost a nightly occurrence two Russian patrol boats were destroyed on May 30th and two transport ferries were damaged near the Kerch Bridge in separate drone strikes.
Woe to the Kremlin
Russia’s much-vaunted and very expensive S-400 air-defence system has been found wanting. Mr Lange says the Ukrainians are using decoy drones to make the Russians light up their radars and reveal their positions. The targeting data are immediately fed to the ATACMS launch crews. Within six minutes the missiles, virtually undetectable because of their speed and low radar cross-section, are hitting their targets. General Hodges notes that Russia’s S-400s are also vulnerable to sabotage by Ukrainian special forces operating inside Crimea. Each battery costs about $200m, and they are not easily replaceable.
The general says that Russian forces have “no place to hide”. With the help of satellite and aerial reconnaissance provided by NATO allies, their own deep knowledge of the territory, and covert forces on the ground, nothing can move in Crimea without the Ukrainians knowing about it. With the arrival of the ATACMS and the increasing sophistication of Ukraine’s own drones, every square metre of the peninsula is in range, including aircraft and equipment convoys moving by road or rail.
General Hodges is confident the Ukrainians will “take down the Kerch Bridge when they are ready”. But it may be more challenging to disrupt the new improved railway line running along the Sea of Azov from Rostov, through the occupied Ukrainian cities of Mariupol and Berdiansk and down into Crimea. Dmitry Pletenchuk, a spokesman for Ukraine’s southern military command, says: “The railway along the land corridor is recognition on the part of the Russian occupiers that the Crimean [Kerch] Bridge is doomed. They are looking for a way to hedge their bets because they are aware that sooner or later, they will have a problem.”
An early test of the wider strategic success of Ukraine’s campaign in Crimea could come in summer, when Russian holidaymakers normally flock across the Kerch Bridge to resorts on the peninsula. If they decide otherwise, says Ben Barry of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a British think-tank, it will be a bad omen for Mr Putin. Crimea used to depend heavily on the tourist industry. Bookings last year were down by nearly a half. “Crimea”, says Mr Barry, “has been turned from being a prestige project to a drain on Russian resources.” ■
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