Barricades and trenches have been widely built on beaches and close to key access roads in Crimea as Vladimir Putin fears losing the peninsula he annexed in 2014.
The degree of fear is evident in the plethora of defenses to stop a naval or land attack.
Dragon’s teeth tank traps have been placed on the strategic Ak-Monai next to the Taurida highway by occupying Russians to stop a Ukrainian bid to retake the peninsula that Putin took in 2014.
Putin has accepted he must decimate the region’s huge tourism industry this summer to hold back against a possible Ukrainian advance as part of an expected counter-offensive in Kiev.
The scale of the operation can be seen in both satellite and ground-level imagery.
The once beautiful places are now covered with trenches and tank traps
Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) sits with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko at a meeting at the Kremlin on Wednesday
Beaches – a favorite with both Russian and Ukrainian tourists as a favorite and glamorous summer playground – have been rendered virtually unusable, wiping out the 2023 summer season.
Many will be completely empty.
Crimea’s northern shores are most acutely defended amid the clearest signs that Putin’s military commanders view the peninsula as vulnerable.
Defensive artillery positions are established.
This comes after an explosion came in Feodosia, Crimea, this morning.
Fragments of a supposedly downed Ukrainian missile appeared as clouds of smoke appeared in the distance
Earlier this week, Ukraine said it could negotiate with Russia in Crimea, but only if it continued to the peninsula’s borders, a huge advance from its current positions.
For Putin, the loss would be devastating, perhaps a fatal blow, and is considered unthinkable in Moscow.
Hardline chairman of the international affairs committee of the Russian parliament, Leonid Slutsky, said: “The status of Crimea is not in question at all.
“It is a matter decided after the 2014 referendum and enshrined in the Russian constitution. The peninsula will forever be an inseparable part of Russia.’
The newly built beaches now look very different
Another view of one of the trenches along the beaches of Crimea
Images of the alleged explosion in Feodosia, Crimea
Fragments of allegedly downed Ukrainian missile that appeared
An illustrative image showing the possibly downed missile
He claimed that Kiev had “neither the strength nor the means” to take back Crimea.
Yan Gagin, an adviser to the annexed authorities in the Donetsk People’s Republic, dismissed Ukraine’s hopes of reaching Crimea as “empty talk that means absolutely nothing.”
Yet the defenses indicate that Russia is deeply concerned.
There are two land routes to Crimea from Ukraine – now both reinforced by new, recently built defenses.
According to Ukrainian sources, some beaches have been mined.
The dictator faces imminent economic carnage in the annexed peninsula’s once money-guzzling holiday industry as people refuse to heed official calls to make “patriotic bookings” this summer.
Almost every beach in the occupied territory now has – or will – giant barricades, which Ukraine claims are also being mined by the Russians.
Putin sees the illegal annexation of Crimea as a holiday jewel in 2014 as one of his greatest successes, but now there is paranoia that Ukraine could use Western weapons to retake an area larger than Wales.
Bookings are now 80 percent lower than last year, which in turn was 30 percent below pre-war levels, with hoteliers demanding state aid to compensate them for the cost of Putin’s war.
One of the trenches is being prepared for an invasion
An aerial view of what the beach trenches look like
Ukrainian soldiers fire an artillery shell near the front line during the war between Russia and Ukraine, in Bakhmut
A TikTok video has been posted showing the wooden planks in the trenches
Tourists to the Black Sea have been shaken by the October 2022 bombing of the bridge across the Kerch Strait by Putin connecting Crimea to Russia, and by rocket attacks on military airfields.
Drone attacks are now an almost daily occurrence.
Ukrainian official Anton Gerashchenko said: “Well, that’s it, here we are – there will be no beach season in Crimea this year…
“All the beaches of the Russian-occupied peninsula will be turned into a coastal defense line and mined.”
Putin’s puppet leader in Crimea, hardliner Sergey Aksyonov, told Russian state television that “thanks to the measures taken on behalf of our president, nothing threatens Crimea.”
He urged Russian tourists not to be put off by “false information” about security which he blamed on Ukrainian officials.
Still, the peninsula’s main airport has been closed for 13 months and Aksyonov’s wartime rhetoric is unlikely to encourage tourists.
“We have a large number of people working [securing the beaches],” he said, emphasizing that the defense was on Putin’s orders.
“If you want peace, prepare for war—so we’d better be ready.”
He declined to give “all the details” about the defenses, but boasted that “with new fortification lines it was impossible for Ukraine to ever take Crimea – the only real danger is drones.”