After Ukrainian special forces carried out a series of audacious raids on Russian military locations deep within the seized peninsula, NATO officials apparently fear that a terrified Vladimir Putin is moving all his fighter planes out of Crimea.
According to the top-secret document dated August 22, Russia has already relocated 10 of its most powerful fighter aircraft, including six Su-35S and four MiG-31BM fighters, back to air bases on its own territory after annexing parts of Ukraine in 2014.
The paper, which Insider saw, predicts that the rest of Putin’s air force will do the same in the next days.
Three significant strikes that occurred in recent weeks targeted the Sevastopol base of Russia’s renowned Black Sea Fleet, an airfield in Saki (which resulted in the loss of at least nine Russian planes and significant infrastructure damage), and an ammo storage facility close to Dzhankoi.
Although several Ukrainian authorities and a number of other sources have said Ukraine’s special forces were likely responsible for the explosions, the country has not formally claimed credit for the strikes.
In response to Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) claim that “more than half” of the combat jets stationed at the Saki airbase were either destroyed or damaged in the August 9 attack, Moscow hastily recalled its fighter jets from the occupied peninsula, which Moscow had previously considered secure and out of Ukrainian strike range.
As beachgoers left the area’s coasts and piled into vehicles to try to leave the peninsula, which had hitherto been spared from the battle, footage from Saki showed enormous plumes of smoke billowing from the brutalised base.
The extraordinary attacks by the Ukrainians this month on Russian forces in Crimea exposed both their fragility and their ability to launch attacks from beyond enemy lines.
According to a Western official, Ukraine is now routinely producing kinetic impacts well beyond Russian defences.
In addition to having a tangible impact on Russia’s logistical assistance, the episodes have also had a substantial psychological impact on the country’s leadership.
They continued, saying that the assaults had put the Black Sea Fleet in a defensive position and prevented Russia from successfully launching an amphibious assault on Odesa on the Ukrainian coast, which would have effectively closed off most of Ukraine’s access to the sea.
According to a NATO document obtained by Insider, the Belbek airport, which is adjacent to the Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Sevastopol, currently has a sizable number of military aircraft, but they are not deemed sufficient to provide a continuous level of air support in the area.
Instead, the paper claims that Moscow has increased the quantity of surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft weaponry systems in an effort to fend off additional attacks.
In the meanwhile, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine regained electricity on Friday after experiencing a power outage on Thursday for the first time in its four-decade existence as a result of “activities of the invaders,” according to the Ukrainian nuclear agency Energoatom.
The facility “is linked to the grid and generates power for the requirements of Ukraine,” according to the operator, as of Friday at 2:04 pm local time.
The nuclear specialists of Ukraine, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky, were able to shield the facility “from the worst case scenario, which is continually being provoked by Russian troops.”
I want to emphasise that the situation remains highly unsafe and dangerous, he continued.
He said that “Russia has brought Ukrainians and all of Europe one step closer to a radioactive catastrophe.”
Energoatom said that the only two of the station’s six operational reactors were affected by the outage, which was brought on by ash pit fires at a nearby thermal power plant.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, the chairman of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said on Thursday that he plans to visit the site soon and issued a dire warning.
The IAEA inspection “is scheduled for the next week,” according to Lana Zerkal, the assistant to the Ukrainian energy minister.
The crew must go there as soon as possible “to assist retain the station under Ukrainian control on a permanent basis,” Zelensky said on Friday.
Since Russian forces took control of Europe’s biggest nuclear facility, Zaporizhzhia, in early March, there has been growing reason for alarm.
The responsibility for the rocket attacks near the complex in the southern Ukrainian city of Energodar has recently been exchanged between Kiev and Moscow.
Moscow is allegedly planning to provide electricity from the Zaporizhzhia facility to the Crimean Peninsula, which Russian forces occupied in 2014.
Washington issued a warning against such a move on Thursday.
Vedant Patel, a spokesperson for the State Department, told reporters that efforts to divert power to occupied territories were ‘inappropriate’ and that the energy that it generates rightfully belongs to Ukraine.
The Russian military was reportedly more visible on satellite images near the power facility, with armoured personnel carriers stationed within 200 feet away from one reactor.