REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov
- Ukrainian drones struck an air defense system, radars, and oil depots in Crimea overnight.
- A Ukrainian security source said the attacks impact Russia’s defense and logistics operations.
- Kyiv has ramped up its deep-strike drone and missile attacks in recent months.
Ukrainian drones knocked out a $20 million Russian air defense system and multiple radar stations during an attack on the occupied Crimean peninsula, a security source told Business Insider on Wednesday.
The attacks mark Ukraine’s latest efforts to hit Russian military and energy targets far beyond the front lines as Kyiv ramps up its long-range drone and missile strikes.
A source in the Security Service of Ukraine, the country’s internal security agency, said long-range attack drones struck a Pantsir surface-to-air missile system and two radar stations overnight. The SBU source spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive operations.
The SBU source called the Pantsir “a key link” in Russia’s air defense network and said each system that has been destroyed weakens its ability to defend Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014. The peninsula is home to key military facilities that have been used to support the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion.
Ukrainian drones also targeted two oil depots on the peninsula, the source said. One attack hit a fuel storage facility in Hvardiiske, causing a large fire, and another targeted infrastructure in Komsomolska. It’s unclear, exactly, how much damage the drone caused.
Russia’s defense ministry said it shot down five Ukrainian drones over Crimea earlier on Wednesday.
AP Photo/Michael Shtekel
The SBU source said that the security agency “continues its systematic work to destroy air defense systems that cover Crimea and oil depots that provide fuel to the enemy,” according to a translation of their remarks.
They said that every deep-strike operation, like the one overnight, hurts Russia’s “military and logistical potential.”
Ukraine has stepped up drone and missile strikes across Russia and its occupied territories, including Crimea, in recent months.
Dozens of Ukrainian attacks have targeted Russian oil refineries and key energy facilities amid a push by Ukraine to choke off a major source of revenue funding Moscow’s war machine and put additional pressure on the Kremlin as ceasefire talks led by the Trump administration continue to stall.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this week that the long-range attacks have reduced Russia’s refining capacity by 20%, with nearly all the strikes carried out by domestically produced weapons.
Last week, the Ukrainian military said that it used British-made Storm Shadow cruise missiles in a massive attack on a chemical plant in Russia’s Bryansk region — a rare disclosure from Kyiv that it used Western weapons to strike inside Russia.
Ukraine long faced restrictions on using Western cruise and ballistic missiles to strike inside Russia. As a workaround to these limitations, Kyiv has invested heavily in the production of its own long-range missiles and drones, some of which have ranges that far exceed those of weapons provided by the US, Britain, and France.
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