HISTORY
At the event on August 6 was a Su-24 with the number “white 09” with a thin yellow border. Interestingly it had a SCALP-EG missile with French symbols under the right
wing and a Storm Shadow with British symbols under the left wing.
hit from a number of enemy radars detected.
The F-16 cannot carry the Franco-British
Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG cruise missiles,
which the Ukrainians are using effectively, and
there is no talk yet of possible US deliveries.
What it can carry, however, are Harpoon antiship missiles, which Ukraine also already has.
And that’s not good news for Russia’s badly
beleaguered Black Sea Fleet.
Crimea “locked”
Speaking of the Black Sea and Storm Shadow
missiles, these are among weapons that allow
Ukraine to gradually gain superiority over the
western part of the sea and attack Crimea
even without a strong navy. Already on Sunday,
August 6, two bridges connecting Crimea to the
Kherson region were hit and seriously damaged
by Storm Shadow missiles. These were the
important Chonkhar Bridge in the north-west
of Crimea and the smaller Henichesk Bridge,
which leads to the Arabat Spit in the northeast of the peninsula. The destruction of these
bridges would sever Crimea’s links with the
frontline areas in southern Ukraine.
The destruction of the Kerch Bridge would
then cut off the whole of Crimea for good,
which could then only be supplied by ships. The
Ukrainians regularly try to do this as well. During
the reporting period, they attacked this bridge
on Saturday, August 12, with S-200 missiles.
These are old anti-aircraft missiles from the
1960s, which Ukraine decommissioned in 2013,
but kept in storage and now uses as ballistic
missiles after modification (presumably
they have new GPS guidance fitted). In this
role, they have a range of up to 400 km. The
missiles are 11 m long and weigh almost
8 tones. At Mach 4, they thus have tremendous
kinetic energy on impact. They also carry
a warhead with 217 kg of explosive. Ukraine
has already used them in July in attacks on an
industrial facility in the Briansk region and on
the Morozovsk airport in the Rostov region. In
the August attack, three S-200 missiles were
aimed at the Kerch Bridge. According to the
Russian side, they were all destroyed in time
by air defenses. The smoke that appeared on
the bridge was only a precautionary protective
measure. Interestingly, however, two streaks
of black smoke were also visible in the white
smoke screen.
On Wednesday, August 23, Ukrainian
missiles hit and partially destroyed a battery
of S-400 anti-aircraft system in Olenivka
on the Crimean coast (about 120 km north of
Sevastopol and 140 km south of Kherson. In
doing so, they probably used Neptune missiles
developed for anti-ship warfare but also
capable of hitting targets on the coast. But that
was not all – the next day (or night) Ukrainian
special forces landed on the coast between
Olenivka and Mayak. They completed the work
of destruction and raised the Ukrainian flag in
Crimea (August 24 was a Ukrainian national
holiday). The Russians claim to have killed
all the Ukrainian soldiers in this action; the
Ukrainians claim to have pulled back without
A burning Russian Tu-22M3 bomber at Solcy-2 airfield. The Russian side initially claimed that it was only slightly
damaged in the attack on August 19.
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casualties. All that is certain is that the S-400
battery was destroyed. Ukrainian troops from
boats also seized four oil platforms, on which
the Russian had radars mounted, in the Black
Sea during August. All of this is leading to the
blinding of Russian defenses and a greater
intensity of Ukrainian attacks on Crimea, which
we will address in a follow-up.
Attacks on airports
Ukraine has not only attacked Crimea, but
also Russian territory on the opposite side. In
addition to the ongoing drone campaign against
Moscow, the attacks on Russian airports are of
particular interest for the topic of this series.
On Saturday, August 19, the Solcy-2 base in
Novgorod region, 620 km from Ukraine, was
attacked in broad daylight. At first Russia
admitted to the damaging of one bomber, but
then photographs emerged showing that one
Tu-22M3 bomber was burned to the ground in
this attack. Satellite images later confirmed
that the base had been evacuated and the
remaining bombers had flown further north.
Two days later, on Monday, August 21, the
Shaykovka base in the Kaluga region, from
which Tu-22M3s also operate, was also
attacked. Ukrainian intelligence claimed that
in both of these attacks two bombers were
destroyed and two damaged. The Russian
side confirmed the attack on the Shaykovka
airfield, adding that all Ukrainian drones
were destroyed. We will probably not know
how it really happened until a long time from
Burning Il-76 at Pskov airport after the night attack
on August 29.
October 2023