Previous stories on Ukraine hitting Russian military bases in Crimea have focused on the possibility of long-range missile strikes. As those strikes have continued, it’s now proven that some have been carried out by drone, and others appear to be the work of Ukrainian special forces or resistance fighters hitting the Russian deep behind the front lines.
None of these is good news for Russia.
Ukraine used a drone to hit the headquarters of the Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol:
Some takeaways:
Ukrainian forces also hit the nearby Belbek Airbase:
More targeted Russian military infrastructure:
The Ukrainians are hitting Russian facilities hard today
• Explosion at munitions depot, Timonovo, Belgorod
• Explosion at Stary Oskol Airfield, Belgorod
• Explosions in Nova Kakhovka, Kherson
• Explosions at Belbek airport, Crimea
• Air defence active near Kerch, Crimea pic.twitter.com/kzNleiN2rU— Louis 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 〓〓 💙 Defend the right to vote (@LouisHenwood) August 18, 2022
Those attacks at Timonovo and Stary Oskol Airfield happened in Russia proper, not occupied Ukraine.
HOLY HIMARS WHAT IS GOING ON? Belgorod local telegram channels report a new explosion at the airfield in Stary Oskol. More than 150 km from front line. Presumably the video below is from there –#Ukraine #Russia pic.twitter.com/35xQAZrpK7
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) August 18, 2022
#RUSSIA on 🔥: Army munitions depot has blown up in Timonovo, #Belgorod. pic.twitter.com/y09shFW3yR
— Igor Sushko (@igorsushko) August 18, 2022
The Wall Street Journal has a Crimea 101 explainer up:
Despite air superiority, Russia clearly doesn’t have the manpower, organization and equipment to protect their rear echelon from ongoing supply and infrastructure attacks. This exacerbates Russia’s well-documented logistics problems, especially given the Russian doctrinal preference for smaller numbers of support personnel maintaining fewer, larger supply depots.
All that would tend to argue against Russia gaining much further territory in what remains of the summer.
Tags: Belgorod, Black Sea, Crimea, drone, Military, Mugin 5 Chinese Drone, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, Sevastopol, Stary Oskol, Ukraine, video, Viktor Nikolayevich Sokolov
Russia has always been a primitive state masquerading as a regional power. They haven’t ever been able to participate in major conflicts absent someone else pumping them up logistically. In the Napoleonic Wars, it was Great Britain. In the Russo-Japanese War, it was Europe “helping” them; same with WWI. WWII, they’d have collapsed into anarchy and chaos, absent the inputs from the US economy that enabled them to fight.
Even during the Cold War, they were reliant on imports; the Italians built their car plants, the nukes all relied on Western electronic switches to work, and everything else was basically a mess. The amount of nitrates they put into their explosives crippled their farming industry; the only reason they had the agricultural boom they did after the Wall came down was the conversion of all that explosive industry feedstock back into fertilizer. Now, they have a choice: Either transfer it back to artillery shells, or starve.
Russia is a sad kleptocratic joke; that’s all it ever has been, since the days of the Golden Horde. Today’s major issue for them is that their former victims don’t want to go under the yoke again, and they’re fighting back fairly effectively. Which is going to cost the Russians dearly, once the ethnic minorities figure out they’re being killed off to further Russian ethnic ambitions of empire… I give it a generation or so and the Buryats are going to be a problem for Moscow. Probably even sooner.
Here are some thoughts from a month ago:
A WWI-style trench warfare artillery is not a battle UKR can win. RU simply has more. UKR needs a game-changer to radically alter the current course of the war. Something audacious. Something that could unhinge all RU forces in the south and demand an immediate re-assessment of war plans.
Attack Melitopol from Zaphorizah. Just 80km with a road and railroad. It is the linch pin for RU is the south. Taking Melitopol means no “land bridge” to Crimea. HUGE bad news for Putin. All other RU efforts get a full stop and reassessment. HQs in shock.
Use recent heavy weapons (120 T-72M1, 120 BMP, 72 2S1, 50% of the gear from Poland), to update 4 veteran Armored Brigades. 14,000 stalwart men. Add 3 battalions of 155mm artillery (~25%), S-300, UAVs, 3,000 ATGMs, 6 Mi-17, logistics battalions, etc.
Using the Mi-17s, drop reece/ATGM teams on the route of advance to join with the existing partisans to report RU activity/locations and perform ambushes. Spotters/UAVs will be key to ID targets for precision artillery strikes.
Barrages with 125+ howitzers for 60 minutes, amounting to over 5,000 shells. Prior recce will show the GPS locations of RU forces & locations for 155mm precision & 122mm artillery. This should destroy the first two echelons on the front line.
Deploy 2 armored & armored infantry battalions on a narrow front on the road & railroad (~5Km) to breakthrough. The assault units move rapidly in the open rear area to the south. Follow-on units (3 armored brigades) can open the breach wider and turn east and west to protect the flank, especially to the east.
Use Harpoons to destroy rail & road bridges SW of Melitopol connecting to eastern Crimea at D+8 hours.
Create a “flying column” to continue on to Melitopol. Send scouts to ascertain what is ahead & on each side. Continue moving artillery forward, giving UKR an advantage in artillery for once. Activate the partisans with SOF and weapons. Add combat brigades ASAP.
With Melitopol taken and the eastern Crimea access out, all RU forces to the west of Melitopol must retreat to Crimea to prevent being isolated. That leaves the bridges in the west of Crimea as the only way for RU forces to retreat to Crimea. An additional reason to retreat from Kherson NOW. Creates additional havoc at RU HQ. Strategic disaster for RU. Popcorn.
“A WWI-style trench warfare artillery is not a battle UKR can win. RU simply has more. UKR needs a game-changer to radically alter the current course of the war. Something audacious. Something that could unhinge all RU forces in the south and demand an immediate re-assessment of war plans.”
Unfortunately for the Russians, they’re not fighting an opponent a WWI-level of stupidity.
Note all the ammo dumps and other targets going up in flames? The blown bridges? The isolated Russian units that will have nowhere to go, and who will have to abandon all their gear to swim across the no-longer bridged rivers?
There are sooooooo many signs of ineptitude on the Russian side of this war that it’s not even funny. They’ve gotten themselves into a huge mess by believing their own bullshit about their “Russia Stronk” Army, and they can’t even manage to run a modern logistical system. Coupled with the cultural problems they have internally, I’m having trouble seeing how the hell they’ve managed to keep things going this long.
It’s all the little things, adding up: Troops they’re having to force or con into going into battle, the lack of key logistics enablers like trailers and forklifts. This is a Potemkin Village military, and they are fast running through the seed corn. My guess is that they’re about a month, month and a half away from losing everything and then having to somehow explain why they’re all swimming across rivers to get away from the coming counter-offensive. Those ammo dumps going up? Those represent a huge chunk of their supposed “artillery superiority” evaporating before it ever gets fired at the Ukrainians.
End state of this whole mess is going to be a broken Russia trying to put the pieces back together after all the minorities get tired of playing the fool for Moscow urbanite Russians. Once it becomes clear about how they’ve expended the lives that they were entrusted with, the whole thing is going to blow up in the oligarchy’s collective faces. You can’t keep promising a hundred thousand rubles a month to the “contract” soldiers you sign up, and then somehow, never manage to pay them. You can do that if you’re in battle for a three-day walkover, or are crushing Georgia under your bootheels. Lengthy conflicts like the one they’ve managed to get into with Ukraine? Not going to work.
It’s a lot like the idiots here in the US–Just exactly where, do you suppose, the US version of the oligarchy is going to get reliable, committed troops, since it’s decided the higher purpose of the military is internal social engineering? Do they really think that the little pussies they’re enlisting these days, who can’t cope with the wrong pronouns being used around them, are going to somehow transform themselves into the hardcases you need in combat? I laugh, and laugh hard. I had to deal with the early precursors of this politically correct bullshit when I was still in, and I’m here to tell you, the snowflakes aren’t going to pass muster when the shit hits the fan. You think the Army had problems in Korea with idiots that couldn’t fight? LOL… Wait until you see what this so-sensitive bunch is like under fire. They lack any real strength or resiliency, because the majority of them are pampered little twats who take offense at anything and everything that isn’t “just so” with their little concerns. That does not make for an effective Army, at all.
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