Ukraine turns attention to Russia’s rearguard
Moscow/Lviv, Ukraine, Aug 17 (EFE).- While the situation has remained relatively unmoved on the front lines in Ukraine in recent weeks, the Ukrainian army has turned to striking behind enemy lines with sabotage attacks in the Donbas, the country’s south and Crimea.
Russia has not only found itself in a situation where it is not making notable gains in its invasion, especially in the region of Donetsk, but also one in which it is struggling to guarantee the safety of its weaponry and supply lines in Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014.
The territory, which juts out into the Black Sea, became a launch pad for Russian troops pushing up into territories of southern Ukraine when Moscow launched its invasion in late February.
Last week, nine Russian warplanes were reportedly destroyed by a blast at a military airbase in what Kyiv says was a sabotage attack.
On Tuesday, it was the turn of a Crimea munitions storage unit in an attack allegedly carried out by a Ukrainian special forces unit operating deep behind enemy lines.
The current focus has shifted to the bridge that Russia constructed to connect its mainland to the annexed peninsula.
“This bridge is an illegal object, permission for the construction of which was not given by Ukraine. It harms the peninsula’s ecology and therefore must be dismantled. Not important how – voluntary or not,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, tweeted on Wednesday.
The sabotage attacks in the last week prompted Russian tourists to flee across the bridge.
In his nightly address, Zelenskyy said that the lines of cars leaving Crimea for Russia demonstrated that the peninsula was not a safe place. He also warned civilians to stay away from Russian military infrastructure in occupied territory.
Podolyak said in an exclusive interview with The Guardian: 2Our strategy is to destroy the logistics, the supply lines and the ammunition depots and other objects of military infrastructure. It’s creating a chaos within their own forces.”
He added that Kyiv had requested a further 50 multiple missile launcher systems from its Western allies. EFE
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