Ukrainian forces have carried out their most complex and ambitious operations to date against Russian military facilities in the occupied region of Crimea, officials in Kyiv have said.
Special forces landed on the western shore of Crimea, near the settlements of Olenivka and Mayak, in a joint operation with the country’s Navy, according to Ukrainian Defense Intelligence.
This is really only a raid, Ukraine has no ability to supply troops by sea, nor the ability to even land enough troops to hold territory.
But the fact that they did this means that Russian “rear” area security is absolute shit, and they have the option to improve that (taking forces from reserves or the fromt) or suffer more rear area raids.
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All they need is a modern Ukrainian version of Jake McNiece. Fortunately Ukraine is filled filthy pathfinders, not just 13.
Yeah, this kind of thing is usually done for propaganda value. It’s encouraging for your side to see that you can pull it off, and it is discouraging for their side to see that they have porous defense behind them. It’s rarely fun to have violent enemy action in your rear. The Doolittle Raid was a prime example of this kind of thing.
Although I understand the reasoning, it’s unfortunate that political agreements are forcing the Ukrainians to fight with one hand tied behind their backs.
The Doolittle raid is the perfect example of a PR move, because it was insanely expensive and did very little. It cost 16 planes and their crews, and took very expensive ships out of the running for months. BUT despite doing basically no damage, made Japan bring 2 carriers away from Midway to take a couple of tiny islands to prevent bomber bases being built on them.
As far as we know, this basically took some RHIBs and troops on foot. Way less than the Doolittle Raid. Unfortunately it’s likely we’ll never know the effect this had, or how many of these raids take place.
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Western powers supplying Ukraine don’t really want to see Ukraine deep striking Russian territory for fear of Russia claiming the West is invading russia, so many of the aid being given to Ukraine has been shorter range equipment. Additionally, Ukraine has been very wary of pushing into Russian territory for the same reason, and therefore can’t really put pressure on Russian forces to move troops away from Ukrainian occupied territory. This leaves Ukraine with, for the most part, only the strategic ability to play pickup on what Russia has already captured, which is easier for Russia to plan for
The other poster summarized exactly what I meant. We are generally not supplying them with weapons systems that can strike deep into Russian territory. I believe Moscow is well with range of a Tomahawk, and missile attacks against a civilian-populated city is a genie that’s already out of the bottle.
I believe the agreement is that the Ukrainians will not use ally-sourced weapon systems inside Russia, and they obviously have to agree. This relegates them to fighting a war of attrition against an enemy that can attack their infrastructure and civilian population at will.