Ukrainian drone strike hits Russia’s Black Sea HQ

Sevastopol is a major port city on the Crimean peninsula, seized by the Russians in 2014. It is also the home of the headquarters for Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet. Now the Ukrainians have struck a potentially significant blow to the Russians by successfully conducting a drone strike on their HQ there. To add insult to injury, they did it on Russia’s Navy Day holiday, leading to the cancelation of observances that were scheduled for that day. Making it even stranger was the news that this wasn’t some fancy, long-range weaponry supplied to Ukraine by the United States. The drone reportedly appeared to be “homemade” in nature. But it still did more than enough damage. Limited casualties were reported, though no deaths were confirmed. (Associated Press)

A drone-borne explosive device detonated Sunday at the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, injuring six people, officials said.

The explosion at the headquarters in the city of Sevastopol on the Crimean peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 caused cancellation of observances of Russia’s Navy Day holiday.

The Black Sea Fleet’s press service said the drone appeared to be homemade. It described the explosive device as “low-power” but Sevastopol mayor Mikhail Razvozhaev said six people were injured in the blast.

I keep seeing analysts claiming that Russia is solidifying its control of the eastern Donbas region, indicating that they may be close to setting up permanent residence. But the Ukrainians don’t seem to have given up the fight. (Although Zelensky did order a withdrawal from Donetsk last night.)

The big question regarding this attack is where the drone was launched from. If you take a look at the map of the Sevastopol region, you’ll see that the port is a long way from the nearest Ukrainian-controlled territory. It’s roughly 200 miles from Odesa and well over 100 miles from Kherson, where fighting is still taking place. That’s a long way for a “homemade” drone to navigate and accurately pull off a strike. So did someone smuggle a drone into the area, along with the explosive charge it carried? Or was this the work of some Ukrainian loyalists who are still living on the peninsula?

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We’re still seeing conflicting reports about both Russia’s capabilities and Putin’s long-term intentions. The British intelligence service just concluded that Russia is “running out of steam” and won’t be able to keep up the war for much longer. But at the same time, our own ambassador to the United Nations said yesterday that Russia still plans to “dissolve [Ukraine] from the world map entirely.”

Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the U.N. Security Council that the United States is seeing growing signs that Russia is laying the groundwork to attempt to annex all of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, including by installing “illegitimate proxy officials in Russian-held areas, with the goal of holding sham referenda or decree to join Russia.”

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov “has even stated that this is Russia’s war aim,” she said.

Lavrov told an Arab summit in Cairo on Sunday that Moscow’s overarching goal in Ukraine is to free its people from its “unacceptable regime.”

The breakdown in some of this analysis may be defined by the difference between what Russia would like to do and what it can actually do. We learned what Russia would like to do during the first weeks of the invasion when they began streaming troops in across the northern border near Belarus and made a beeline for Kyiv. If they had been able to quickly overrun the capital and force the Ukrainian government out, they could have decapitated the country politically and claimed the entire territory.

We all saw what happened to that effort. Now they appear to have more modest goals, focused on the industrial regions to the east, in and around the Donbas oblast. Whether or not they will be able to hold the land that they’ve taken remains to be seen. But they’ve certainly held onto the Crimean peninsula well enough for the better part of a decade. Either way, a war that was originally projected to be over in a matter of weeks is now looking as if it could drag out for the rest of the year.

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