CRIMEA: JUNE 2026 – AN UPDATE

Last year back in October, I wrote the article on this link: THE CRIMEA GAMBIT: UKRAINE’S STRATEGY FOR ITS RETURN

Having just re-read the article, nine months on things are even worse for Russia than they were then – and they were getting pretty bad.

President Zelensky says the attacks on Crimea and elsewhere are to persuade Putin back to the negotiation table – but he knows as well as I do that historically applying more force to a situation rarely ever succeeds in doing that. If anything it encourages your opponent to refuse to give in – and perhaps thats the real strategy. As the allies realized in WW2, when the head of German Military Intelligence (Abwehr), Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, wanted to gain support for overthrowing Hitler, he got nowhere. The allies had long deduced that it was better to have Hitler alive, because he made so many mistakes he was contributing toward his own downfall. The idea of having someone who knew what they were doing in charge was not welcome.

I’ve recently alluded to the way that Russias government is appearing to be overloaded with the need to make decisions, and this is where Crimea, coupled to the long range drone campaign in general, on top of the immensely effective tactical and local semi-strategic drone warfare, has overwhelmed Russias ability to cope.

It’s not really possible to detach Crimea from the overall strategic campaign at this point. They have become one and the same, but the focus on Crimea is for Ukraine, a strategic, political and moral imperative. This is where this war really began. Putin’s success here was the catalyst for his spreading the war to Donbas and then all of Ukraine. Only by reversing that process, taking away his greatest political triumph, can the war be made to come home to him and to Russia and the Russian people.

The extraordinary is now happening. Using aerial drones and to a lesser extent the threat of naval drones by keeping Russias navy away, Ukraine has almost completely isolated the peninsula. The roads, rail and ferry routes have all been destroyed or are so heavily and relentlessly harassed they’re impassable. Russian colonists are leaving the fuel free, food free, water free and blacked out former paradise in their droves using the only way out – the Kerch bridge. It’s the only reason Ukraine has allowed it to remain standing. Putins golden arch that was his own pet project is almost unusable. Trucks and rail can’t use it, but single cars going one at a time after a ten minute search for bombs are allowed to cross. The line is now some 20km long. It grows daily, everyone waiting their turn.

Russia still maintains a strong military force on the island and the beaches are mined at key points – it’s not as if Ukraine is going to suddenly storm the beaches and drive the Russians out. It’s far more likely they’ll go by themselves when things become unbearable.

Russias ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ is now so unsafe no aircraft uses it. Its bereft of air defences because Putin moved what there was to the defence of Moscow. That city is technically so heavily defended you would think a migrating goose wasn’t safe but it doesn’t work like that in Russia. They figured out that the problem with the Pantsir short range defence system is it’s too low down to detect drones quickly enough, so they’ve installed them on civilian apartment block roofs. It was a Pantsir fired missile that gave us the igniting oil drum detonation of the decade and the flying saucer memes. Appropriately enough the most extraordinary explosion of this war in Moscow, was Russia’s own doing. It says so much.

Ukraine took the war to Russia with this campaign at a strategic level and they’ve been having as much success at the rear of the battlefield – especially in Donetsk and Luhansk, although these are vastly more difficult areas to operate in because there are so many roads, unlike in the Zaporhizia and Kherson occupation zones where there are so few.

Russia has tried with a modicum of success to replicate what Ukraine is doing in the field of logistics interdiction. However they’ve been forced to keep it localized because the fact is the destroyed factories, the fuel shortages, and the general supply chain to the front just cannot deliver the right type of drone in anything like the numbers to scale up. Ukraine acquired the advantage by destroying the source of the drones components and then destroying as much as they could in transit. Its partly this that makes me so opposed to a ceasefire in place – Ukraine would loose the momentum and the Russians would simply use the time to resupply and establish better defences.

Right now Ukraine has the edge, a real advantage and it needs to be ruthlessly relentless about exploiting it, Russia has never looked or been so weak, and it can only get worse if Ukraine keeps up the pressure. Any relenting at this point would be a strategic disaster.

Russia is overwhelmed, its sclerotic top down command system is unable to process so many things happening so fast. Having for example, given the big factory and refinery owners the right to buy weapons and equipment to defend their assets, the regime, always afraid that private armies might emerge that could threaten it, insisted that only local militia or military employed by the state can man any of it. Most of them are busy dying on the frontlines in Ukraine, so oddly enough there is nobody to operate the very weapons the companies have purchased. And even if there are, there’s nobody to train them how to use the equipment.

In Ukraine, my contacts there say people in general are somewhat amazed at what their country has achieved. Almost to the point of “we did that?” When you have been defending so long, being able to attack deep into the enemies homeland is extraordinary. Hope that the war might end and Russia leave will grow. Putin will not go quietly, his army will not leave without yet more pressure. That pressure is coming.

Just remember back in February 2022 when Lukashenko let the Russians invade Ukraine from his own country. In the past weeks he’s become so frightened of what Ukraine can do he submitted to an ultimatum to switch off the repeating towers that allowed Russian drones to attack Kyiv and further west. Putin will have been fuming at such a move, but Lukashenko did it anyway. That shows you the power dynamic has markedly changed – who has all the cards now?

The war has changed, the tide has turned. There’s a long way to go, Russia is going to lose.

The Analyst

militaryanalyst@bsky.social