Ukraine update: Crimea

In the last month, Ukraine has stepped up its drone and missile game. While FPV drones had already given the Ukrainian military mastery over the front lines, slowing Russia's progress in Donetsk to a crawl and raising Russian casualty rates to levels best described as "ghastly," the more recent advances have come from broader use of medium and long range drones.

The last two weeks in particular have seen Ukraine repeatedly striking targets deep inside Russia, such as oil refineries near Moscow. This follows on the heels of a massive raid on June 18, when as many as 500 Ukrainian drones penetrated Russian defenses to strike multiple targets.

While, for much of the last four years, Vladimir Putin had managed to disguise the cost of the war from his core supporters in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the intensity of recent of attacks has made that impossible. Not only are Muscovites seeing black smoke spreading across the horizon almost daily, fuel shortages are starting to be felt all over Russia. Even though Putin got a temporary boost when Donald Trump's war on Iran raised global oil prices, that hasn't helped as much as expected because Ukrainian strikes have put a big crimp in Putin's payday.

And Ukraine is now doing something very canny. It's not hitting the sources of oil. It's destroying Russia's ability to refine that oil for a domestic market.

Earlier strikes focused largely on export terminals and storage facilities, temporarily disrupting shipments but leaving Russia's ability to refine crude largely intact. More recent attacks have concentrated on refineries themselves and have been leaving the terminals alone.

Russia is still exporting crude, but it's unable to supply its own markets. And nowhere is this being felt more keenly than in the occupied region of Crimea. As the BBC reports:

Power blackouts are now being reported in Russian-occupied Crimea in addition to fuel shortages, as Ukraine intensifies efforts to isolate the region annexed by Moscow in 2014. ...

Fuel in Crimea is now reserved mostly for government services, after Russian-installed leader Sergei Aksyonov announced on Sunday that all sales at petrol stations were suspended.

This plays well with a narrative that's been building in social media and YouTube videos ever since Russia's vaunted "spring offensive" turned out to be a failure: Ukraine is about to liberate Crimea.

Social media posts, including Russian chatter on Telegram, have returned again and again to this idea. But over four years into a war in which no one has made a major advance since 2022, how possible is it that Russia could be booted from a portion of Ukraine it has occupied since Feb. 2014?

At first, the idea may seem highly unlikely. The retaking of Crimea would dwarf Ukraine's last big liberation—that of the city of Kherson and the surrounding region—which came in November of 2022. Since then, the increasing use of drones on both sides has made rapid advance all but impossible.

Assuming they didn't mount an astounding amphibious assault, to even reach Crimea, Ukraine would have to recapture the portion of Kherson east of the Dnieper River, or strike south from Zaporizhzhia city. Either way, it would mean covering at least 65 kilometers of land now occupied by Russian forces, with some of the area south of Zaporzhzhia among the most heavily reinforced areas of the Russian lines.

However. very serious people are starting to take the liberation of Crimea very seriously. As former head of the U.S. European Command Intelligence Division Jonathan Sweet wrote in The Hill on Thursday:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his generals are methodically isolating Crimea, turning off the lights for Putin as they do so. On Wednesday, the Kyiv Independent reported that half of Crimea is now without power due to Ukrainian strikes. Russian authorities in Crimea have not only been forced to ration fuel but to halt all gasoline sales to civilians.

Putin’s end is coming in Crimea.

The isolation of Crimea increased earlier this week when Ukrainian drones hit a railway bridge, power plant, and military assets inside the captive oblast. This was part of another wave in which a reported 269 drones crossed into Crimea or nearby regions of Russia. According to Russian officials, Ukraine didn't just target the rail bridge, but went directly after the trains. At least three locomotives were reportedly taken out of service.

It's unclear how much all of this has shaken Putin and the Russian military, but it has certainly had an effect on Russians living in the occupied region. Tens of thousands are trying to escape. Heavy congestion on the Kerch Bridge has reportedly brought the stream of exiting traffic to a standstill.

Other means of getting out of Crimea have become problematic. Even if the road to the northern coast remains passable, escaping to Russia along the R-280 "land bridge" through the captured Ukrainian cities of Melitopol and Mariupol is not a route many civilians are equipped to face. Going that way would mean a long drive through territory where there are few supplies and even military vehicles are harassed by frequent forays from Ukrainian drones.

Ferries that once ran from Sebastopol to Russian ports have either been destroyed or are afraid to move under the threat of both air and sea drones. Three of the five car ferries that operate from Kerch have been lost. Frequent warnings of incoming drones or missiles have meant that the Kerch Bridge can be closed with thousands of cars trapped at any moment.

Fuel shortages. Water shortages. Frequent drones strikes. A strong possibility that things will only get worse. Nobody in Russia is thinking about their vacation in Crimea this summer. Everyone there is concentrating on getting out.

But can Ukraine actually liberate Crimea?

They can. And that last big advance, the one that liberated Kherson city, shows the way.

For weeks leading up to that event, the battle lines north and west of Kherson were all but frozen. Ukraine made several attempts to dislodge Russian forces who were largely entrenched at towns and villages along the Inhulets River, but that fighting brought decidedly mixed results. Then Ukraine used longer range missiles to strike at the series of bridges across the Dneiper, including the main highway and rail bridges that service the city of Kherson. Within days, Russian forces withdrew from the city and the whole of western Kherson. After weeks of bloody fighting, Kherson fell almost as quickly as Ukrainian forces could move forward.

Russia didn't go out fighting. They went out in hastily assembled strings of barges, knowing that if they didn't retreat, forces west of the River would be left without ammunition and supplies.

This seems to be exactly what is Ukraine is attempting to stage in Crimea. Ukrainian strikes have systematically hit supply lines that arced through coastal ports in southern Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk Oblasts. That most recent drone assault took out a critical bridge near Henichesk at the northeast corner of the Crimean Peninsula.

Map of Crimea region courtesy of Andrew Perpetua

Russia's ability to supply Crimea from the north is largely gone. They've already been forced to abandon their naval bases in the area after repeated attacks. What's left is whatever they can bring over the Kerch Bridge; a bridge that has twice been seriously damaged by Ukrainian attacks including one using a truck bomb in 2022 and another with sea drones in 2025.

Ukrainian drones have already hit targets at both ends of the bridge in the latest series of attacks. As The Washington Post reported.

Breakthroughs in midrange drones — Ukrainian-built and operating via Starlink, and U.S.-made artificial intelligence-powered Hornets — have tilted the drone war in Kyiv’s favor, enabling strikes across the land corridor to Crimea, including targeting of fuel tankers on the road.

The northern route along the R-280 highway is no longer capable of bringing in significant supplies to the region. Ukraine has successfully damaged rail lines, not just along the Black Sea coast, but in neighboring areas of Russia.

All that still holds Crimea to Russia is the thin strand of the 19-kilometer Kerch Bridge. It seems highly likely that the only reason the Kerch Bridge remains open is because Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants it open. He wants it open, for now at least, to give the Russians a corridor of escape.

However, the problem with expecting Crimea to turn into the Liberation of Kherson 2.0 comes down to one thing: Putin.

For Putin, Crimea is infinitely more important than Kherson. More important that capturing his announced targets in Donetsk. More important than holding onto any captured territory in Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, or anywhere else.

The occupation of Crimea in 2014 and building of the Kerch Bridge in 2018 remains the crowning achievement of Putin's time in power. Losing it would be tantamount to admitting that everything he has done, especially the war in Ukraine, was a bloody and expensive failure.

In 2022, Putin personally drove a Mercedes across the repaired Kerch Bridge on to signal his confidence in its reopening after the truck bombing two months earlier. The event was broadcast live on Russian television. It was just one of many occasions in which Putin demonstrated the singular symbolic importance of Crimea and the bridge.

It would be wonderful to think that Ukrainian forces could drive into Crimea with the kind of celebration that came with the liberation of Kherson. But they could well have to fight their way through tens of thousands of Russian forces lined up to keep Putin in control. Even without power. Even without food. It seems likely the Russian dictator will do anything to maintain theoretical control over Crimea.

But it is just theoretical control. Because with the lack of power, shortage of fuel, difficultly of getting clean water, and increasing threat of attack, the half-deserted cities of Crimea are already falling into chaos.

If Crimea goes, Putin goes with it. In capturing it, Ukraine might not just liberate this oblast, but force Russia to cede much or all the territory it currently occupies. Ukraine needs this. Slow as their advance has been, Russian forces are now inside of 20km from Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, making these cities vulnerable to traditional artillery and shorter range drones. Russia is spending incredible levels of blood in an effort to secure the last corner of Donetsk Oblast.

Holding onto Crimea may require forces Putin doesn't have ... or lead him to an atrocity in defense of his own ego. On the other hand, Zelenskyy has worked for months to put Crimea in a box. It's the one sure checkmate to Russia's continued advantage in forces and Ukraine's tiring front line troops.

Don't be surprised if the final route out of Crimea gets cut in the coming days. Then we'll see what happens next.