Making Crimea a handicap rather than an asset. This is the objective that the Ukrainian army seems to have been pursuing for several months, in accordance with the directives of President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has made it the strategic priority of the year, despite the intensification of Russian pressure on the eastern and northern fronts.
A rear base, a hub, an outpost... The peninsula annexed in 2014 in defiance of international law remains an essential part of Russia's military presence in Ukraine, and Moscow's most precious prize. But its relative geographical isolation could also be its Achilles heel. Cutting off the narrow logistical routes linking it to Russia would make the situation untenable for troops deployed there, as well as for those holding the southern oblasts of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk. The Ukrainian army and special forces have been working on this since the start of the large-scale conflict.
The Kerch Bridge, a logistical route of the utmost strategic and symbolic importance at the time, has therefore been damaged twice, in October 2022 and July 2023. The headquarters of Russia's Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol was bombed on September 22, 2023; more than a third of its ships were disabled, according to the Ukrainian navy's count, and the rest had to retreat to the less exposed ports of Novorossiysk and Feodosia. But the situation accelerated in the spring, with the arrival of American ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) missiles with a range of 300 km, twice that of the version supplied until then, leaving no region of Crimea invulnerable.
Since then, there has been an almost daily barrage of fire, particularly at Russia's S-300 and S-400 air defense batteries, costly flagships of the Russian military-industrial complex. According to the Ukrainian army's Center for Strategic Communication, about 15 in Crimea were hit between mid-April and mid-June.
What explains this apparent vulnerability? "ATACMS, which are quasi-ballistic missiles fired from HIMARS or M270 multiple rocket launchers, are capable of deviating from a standard arc trajectory through rapid turns and course corrections actions. They present challenges for a system like the S400, which was not originally conceived to work in a main anti-ballistic role," said Federico Borsari of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) in Washington. "The unpreparedness or inexperience of Russian operators in dealing with such weapons could also be an aggravating factor, as could firing them in bursts and equipping them with fragmentation charges, which has indeed been observed," he continued.
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