Ukraine likely to face bloody Crimea fight, satellite images show

An analysis of satellite images by Al Jazeera has revealed that Russian troops are fortifying the Crimean peninsula in anticipation of a Ukrainian attempt to retake it.

Experts say those defenses are likely to make such an effort difficult and bloody.

Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, eight years before launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. As the war has dragged on for more than a year, Ukraine’s political and military leadership has made it clear that it defines victory as reclaiming the 1991 borders, which Russia had recognised. The United Nations and all of Ukraine’s western allies also recognize those borders, including Crimea.

The investigation by Al Jazeera’s news verification and control unit Sanad revealed that between February and March, the border with Crimea and surrounding areas were transformed into a fortified barrier in anticipation of an expected spring counter-offensive by Ukrainian forces.

In particular, an extensive network of trenches and defenses was built that now extends across the frontier villages of Crimea. The same period also saw the construction and expansion of several major military bases, according to the images provided to Sanad by SkySat and Planet.com.

Footage taken on April 1 also shows authorities in Crimea erecting a seawall at a dock of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in the port of Sevastopol, alongside several new buildings and infrastructure developments in the port area.

Meanwhile, advertisements for workers to build fortifications have appeared on Russian job sites in Crimea in recent months. Analysts say a shortage of manpower may be a major reason why these trenches are not yet fully effective.

“None of the trenches in the photos are 100 percent complete. They all indicate work in progress, as the trench networks are not interconnected and do not have full communication trenches,” Zev Faintuch, senior intelligence analyst at security firm Global Guardian, told Al Jazeera after seeing the photos.

The trenches in northern Crimea suggest Russia is acting to deter Ukraine from launching a ground attack from the north, Ukraine’s only entry point, Faintuch said.

Further south, the trenches and fortifications suggest that Russia expects a successful breakthrough of its first line of defense via two highways, the E97 and E105.

“The new Russian defense lines take advantage of the topography and existing villages to create bottlenecks along these highways. Essentially, if the Russians are on the defensive in Crimea, they intend to give Ukraine a taste of its own medicine,” Faintuch said, referring to the high casualties Ukrainian defenders inflicted on Russian forces entering the eastern provinces. attempted to take Luhansk. and Donetsk.

Crime operations ‘logical’

Last September, the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhnyi, and Lieutenant General Mykhailo Zabrodskyi wrote a strategy note describing Crimea as the “center of gravity” of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and an area that would allow Russia to threaten forever Ukraine.

“Crimea was and remains the base for lines of communication on the southern strategic flank of Russian aggression,” they wrote. “The territory of the peninsula allows the deployment of significant groups of troops and stockpiles of material resources.

“It makes sense to start from the 2023 planning of an operation or series of operations to seize the peninsula,” they said.

The generals also said Ukraine would need “ten to twenty combined military brigades – depending on the plan and ambitions of the Ukrainian command”. Since Ukraine no longer had access to sufficient Soviet-era weapons to equip these brigades, the generals said, “this can only be done by replacing the main types of weapons of already existing brigades with modern weapons used by Ukraine’s partners. delivered”.

At the end of January, the Western allies made an important decision to supply Ukraine with offensive weapons, pledging 258 main battle tanks and hundreds of armored fighting vehicles. But those tanks would only equip three brigades in a NATO army, and only about four dozen have been delivered.

Is this possible?

Western leaders backing Ukraine with military aid have been hesitant to give the Ukrainian government the go-ahead to invade Crimea, not least because Russian President Vladimir Putin has insinuated that doing so could encourage the use of tactical nuclear weapons. cause.

This cautious approach has its drawbacks.

Alexander Vindman, a retired US Army lieutenant colonel, opposed the “incremental escalation” that Ukraine and Russia are currently following.

“By the summer, Ukraine will likely target more of Russia’s military infrastructure in Crimea in preparation for a wider campaign to liberate the peninsula,” he said. wrote in February, and the West provided just enough weapons for Ukraine to fight, not win.

But Russia does not win either. It suffered greatly from the attempts to take Donetsk and Luhansk.

“If you get to the point where the Russians are weak and the Ukrainians are at their peak, then if and when the decision is made that we’re not looking for a diplomatic solution, we really think we can take Crimea. Colonel Dale Buckner, a retired special forces commander who heads Global Guardian, told Al Jazeera.

As for Putin’s nuclear threats, Ukraine rejects them. Military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov called them “not true”.

“Crimea will be returned to us. I’ll tell you more: it all started in Crimea in 2014 and it will all end there,” Budanov said.

Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, recently reiterated that belief when he listed a number of steps Ukraine would take after it recaptured Crimea, including the destruction of the Kerch Bridge, which Russian mainland connects.

What has Ukraine done to control Crimea?

The battle for Crimea could be said to have begun last summer, when Ukraine forced Putin to withdraw large military assets.

A drone attack on the Russian naval base in Sevastopol in July 2022 injured six people. Another naval drone strike triggered a series of explosions in late October, convincing Russia to move its submarines and frigates east to Novorossiysk.

On August 9, a Ukrainian drone strike on Saky airfield knocked out up to 10 Russian Su-24 and Su-30M aircraft, forcing Russia to move its aircraft to mainland Russia. Another drone strike hit Belbek airfield in October.

“The task of the Armed Forces of Ukraine for 2023 is to make these feelings sharper, more natural and more tangible for the Russians,” wrote Zaluzhny and Zabrodskyi, the Ukrainian generals.

On October 8, a truck bomb temporarily disabled the Kerch Bridge, which connects Crimea to the Russian mainland, hampering supplies.

Two days later, the General Staff of Ukraine said Russian occupation authorities were preparing contingency plans to evacuate the families of the Crimean occupation leadership to Russia if necessary. Those evacuations reportedly began in recent weeks.

What will be the cost of surgery in Crimea?

“Just as the Ukrainians could make mincemeat of Russian armor and armored fighting vehicles, an attack on Crimea would be dangerous for the attackers, even with new and superior equipment,” Faintuch said.

Ukrainian troops managed to retake thousands of square miles of occupied land in Kherson and Kharkiv last September, but Faintuch believes Crimea is a different story.

“Crimea is one of the most defensible pieces of strategic real estate in the world,” he said. “It has everything you need: in-depth defenses, extremely limited and narrow entry points, air cover and the Black Sea Fleet to pick up invaders… Should we see an invasion, the conflict will undoubtedly take a turn. ”

General Mark Milley, commander of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the complete removal of Russian troops from Ukraine, including Crimea, as a “very, very difficult military task”.

Ukraine might be content to defuse Crimea, at least for a while. Zaluzhny said in December that the army planned to capture Melitopol in the Zaporizhia region in order to reach the shores of the Sea of ​​Azov. From there, it could effectively cut Russia off from Crimea by firing at the Kerch Bridge.

And Ukraine last year requested Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missiles with a range of 300 km (186 miles) from the US to attack Russian airfields in Crimea. The US has not provided ATACMS so as not to provoke Russia, but it has given Ukraine 160 km (99 miles) of small-diameter ground-launched bombs and numerous Phoenix Ghost kamikaze drones.

David Petraeus, a retired US Army general and former CIA director, said in January that cutting Russia’s connection to Crimea “would be of enormous value”.

Faintuch agreed with this approach. “Threatening Crimea is the key to ending this conflict,” he said.