Ukraine aims to effectively blockade Crimea in coming months
Robert Brovdi (Photo: robert_magyar/Telegram)
The Ukrainian military is preparing a major drone strike
campaign to cut supply routes sustaining the Russian occupation of Crimea,
Unmanned Systems Forces commander Robert Brovdi told Reuters
on June 11.
Brovdi said the intensity of recent drone attacks has already forced occupation authorities on the peninsula to impose fuel rationing and that the next phase will include blocking key highways.
“Military analysts say Ukraine's campaign of mid-range strikes inside Russian-controlled territory has cut supplies to its front line — bringing their advance to a near standstill last month — and weakened its air defenses, opening the way for longer-range strikes that have destroyed oil infrastructure and arms manufacturing deep inside Russia,” the report said.
Brovdi then told the journalists his branch of the military intends to force Moscow to start pulling back its troops after supplying them becomes untenable.
“We will create conditions that will make it extremely difficult for any military personnel or those working in the defense industry to remain in Crimea, in the temporarily occupied territories, or use the access routes to them,” Reuters quoted the commander.
Over the past month, he said, drone operations have reduced traffic on the Novorossiysk Highway, a critical Russian military supply route to Crimea through the occupied south of Ukraine, by more than two-thirds.
Brovdi said remaining Russian forces on that exposed road
are highly vulnerable and that destroying enemy trucks has become "as easy
as shooting partridges in an open field."
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