Celebrating his seizure of Crimea in 2014, President Vladimir V. Putin later called the peninsula an “unsinkable aircraft carrier,” hailing Russia’s return there as a symbol of revanchist ambition.
Now the Ukrainian military is hammering Crimea with swarming drone attacks, seeking to transform it from a Russian-occupied fortress into a nightmare for the Kremlin to manage.
All of this has shaken life in Crimea to the greatest extent since Russia illegally annexed the peninsula in 2014. It has also caused some Russian forces along the southern front to shift into defensive operations, according to Kostiantyn Mashovets, a Ukrainian military analyst.
Overnight Wednesday into Thursday, Russia bombarded Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, killing at least 30, according to Ukrainian emergency services, in a deadly show of force after weeks of Ukrainian attacks.
Moscow has spent years fortifying Crimea, tripling its troop presence, deploying advanced air defenses and coastal batteries, and studding the land with missile launch systems. Fighter jets and bombers packed airfields, new vessels joined the Black Sea Fleet, and the $3.7 billion Kerch Strait Bridge gave Russia direct access to Crimea.
None of that could change geography.
Crimea juts out into the sea, leaving it initially vulnerable to Ukraine’s maritime drones. In the first years of the war, Ukraine targeted Russia’s naval headquarters in Sevastopol, drove its warships from Crimean ports and turned the peninsula’s waters into a hunting ground.
Its efforts to strike at Crimea, though, were limited by the weapons Ukraine had at the time. Now Ukrainian officials say their ever-evolving arsenal can inflict more pain, potentially enough, they hope, to bring Moscow back to the negotiating table.
“There’s no place to hide in Crimea,” said Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a retired commanding general of U.S. Army Europe. “The Ukrainians have the ability to touch every single place where there’s an air defense weapon or a logistics hub or an airfield or headquarters.”
Swarming Russia’s Air Defenses
The current Ukrainian campaign on Crimea at the outset targeted Russia’s air defense network.
In June alone, Ukraine claimed to target 31 air defense systems and radars, the most frequent military targets for its drone strikes.
The biggest success of these strikes, according to Ukraine, was what it called the destruction of the $100 million Neva-B radar system, an asset capable of tracking targets up to 370 miles away. A drone video posted by the Ukrainian military showed the attack on June 25. The New York Times could not independently verify if it was damaged, but military analysts said it appears it is not operational.
The attacks have exposed significant vulnerabilities in Russia’s defenses, which were originally built for traditional missiles and aircraft, not fleets of drones.
Pounding Roads and Bridges
With air defenses weakened, Ukraine then went after supply lines.
After strikes on ships and the halt of ferry operations, Russia now depends solely on narrow land and bridge corridors. Ukrainian forces are trying to cut them off.
The attacks on bridges have created a cat-and-mouse dynamic, with Russia rushing to repair the damage and Ukraine striking again.
Ukraine damaged one such bridge, the Chonhar Bridge connecting Crimea to Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, on June 7. Russia quickly set up a temporary pontoon bridge; days later, Ukrainian drones struck the temporary bridge.
Over the past two weeks, Russia appears to have built a causeway, which could be harder for drones to take out, alongside the damaged bridge. Construction vehicles could be seen working on the causeway in images taken by Vantor, a satellite imaging company.
Along with bridges and railways, Ukrainian drones targeted cargo trucks, fuel tankers and trains throughout the month. The burning husks of large trucks transporting fuel and derailed train cars were filmed and photographed by civilians and Ukrainian military drones, highlighting supply chain disruptions.
Ukrainian military units posted numerous videos in June touting their strikes across Crimea. These clips, showing first-person views from drones striking military and logistical sites, have become a pillar of Ukraine’s wartime propaganda efforts to illustrate battlefield successes against Russia. The Times collected these videos, verified their locations and cross-referenced the strike locations with satellite imagery. The Times could not verify the full extent of the damage to Ukraine’s claimed targets.
Kateryna Stepanenko, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, said Russian forces were increasingly trying to counteract Ukrainian drone strikes by patrolling critical southern routes with drones and interceptor units.
“But they need more mobile air defense to blunt the impact of Ukrainian strikes,” she said.
Ukrainian commanders expect Russian troops to adapt, but said they would shift their tactics in turn.
“Adaptation can take days, weeks or months, but we consistently find new ways to strike in any direction, at any depth, with whatever assets we have,” said Artem Bielienkov, the chief of staff of Ukraine’s 412th Unmanned Systems Brigade.
Knocking Out the Grid
Strikes on fuel facilities and the energy grid have caused widespread blackouts in Crimea, leading the local authorities to declare a state of emergency. Gas stations have run out of fuel, and thousands of people have fled the peninsula since Ukraine’s latest strikes began.
Throughout June, The Times verified Ukrainian strikes on oil and gas storage facilities, compression stations and power plants.
One of the Ukrainian attacks targeted an oil terminal at a port in the city of Kerch, creating smoke that could be seen miles away.
On the same day, Ukraine hit an oil storage facility at the port of Kavkaz on the other side of the Kerch strait, striking a blow to Russia’s ability to transport oil between Crimea and Russia.
Another Ukrainian drone video from June 19 shows a strike on a gas storage facility near Dozorne.
Though the attacks have pushed some Russian forces into a defensive posture, Mr. Mashovets, the military analyst, cautioned that it could take weeks or months to degrade Russia’s combat capabilities to the point where they might be forced to pull back from positions in southern Ukraine.
“To achieve the final objective, this blockade must be intensified,” he said. “This situation must be maintained for a sufficiently long period of time.”
Nevertheless, Crimea’s faltering grid “exposed the peninsula’s systemic vulnerability,” said Hennadii Riabtsev, a Ukrainian energy analyst. “The occupiers’ attempts to fix the damage to key facilities — like the Tavria and Balaklava thermal power plants, major substations and fuel terminals — are running into complex technical and logistical problems,” he said.
The Ukrainian attacks have had a compounding effect, Mr. Riabtsev said, threatening to turn the peninsula into “a giant logistical mousetrap.”
