Smoke rises from the side of the production complex of the Ilsky oil refinery in the Krasnodar region of southern Russia.Source: Krasnodar Governor Veniamin Kondratyev Telegram Channel, via Associated Press
Drones hit oil depots and a refinery, setting off huge fires. Explosions derailed not one but two freight trains. In recent days, Russian infrastructure near the Ukrainian border and in Russian-controlled Crimea have come under repeated attacks.
Ukraine has not directly taken responsibility for the strikes. But accelerating the pace of the attack could help set the stage for a counteroffensive, which Ukrainian officials have said will begin soon, according to military analysts.
Though reaching well beyond the frontlines of the war, the strikes strained Russia’s logistics, forcing Moscow to spend additional resources on rebuilding damaged infrastructure and making planning for Russia’s defenses against the counteroffensive more difficult, analysts say. And they also have a psychological effect, piercing Moscow’s aura of invincibility on the territory it controls, they say.
“It’s part of preparing the battlefield,” said Yohann Michel, a research analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “You weaken the enemy’s body in various places to ensure they don’t move the moment you actually attack.”
Such attacks are not primarily designed to hit the point of a future counteroffensive, he said. Ukraine’s push to retake territory is expected to focus on areas Russia has captured since the start of its all-out invasion more than 14 months ago, including the eastern Donbass region and southern Kherson and Zaporizhia regions.
But Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula that Russia illegally annexed in 2014, has been a key channel for supplies and troops in support of Russian occupation forces in southern Ukraine and has been hit repeatedly in recent months. Ukraine has largely taken responsibility for strikes in Crimea, although it rarely gives details. But it has usually maintained ambiguity about involvement in attacks on Russian territory.
Mr Michel said infrastructure strikes far from the front lines aim to create bottlenecks in the military supply chain and force Russia to redirect resources and energy to fill the gaps, which in turn exposes other areas.
The hits have multiplied in the last few days. Russian officials reported strikes on rail lines in Russia’s Bryansk region on Monday and Tuesday. The region was the base for the invasion last February and has since been used as a launching pad for drone attacks on Ukraine.
There was also a fire in Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014. Four drones also attacked storage facilities at one of the largest oil refineries in southern Russia’s Krasnodar Territory, according to Tass, the Russian state news agency.
A British Defense Intelligence Report said Thursday that the “disruption to the fuel storage and distribution network will likely force adjustments to Russia’s military refueling operations to mitigate targeting.”
As a measure of Crimea’s importance to Russian military logistics, the mayor of the occupied city of Melitopol in southern Ukraine said last month that just under a third of supplies passing through the city destined for Russian forces come from Crimea.
Western allies have urged Ukraine not to use newly delivered long-range weapons for attacks inside Russia, fearing such attacks could provoke the Kremlin into escalating its war. Analysts say Ukraine has developed a fleet of drones that can travel hundreds of kilometers with ammunition. And Russia’s air defenses are designed to protect its long border from aircraft and much larger missiles, according to Samuel Bendett, a Russia expert at CNA, a research institute in Virginia.
Mr Bendett said one benefit to Ukraine from conducting drone strikes would be to force Russia to disclose the location of its air defense systems, making them vulnerable to future attacks.
Furthermore, any attacks in Russia can cause “serious psychological trauma” and affect Moscow’s sense of control over its own territory, said a Ukrainian colonel, Petro Chernyk, who was careful not to imply that the Ukrainian military was behind the recent attacks .
“Everything that is happening on the territory of the Russian Federation in terms of destruction of fuel, lubricants and other valuable materials that ensure the war is incredibly good,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
Marc Santora contributed to the coverage.
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