Translation of a recognized military expert (michel goya) regarding CRIMEA.
The scalding of Crimea
It was not completely new, but after the First World War, questions began to arise about how to achieve strategic gains against opposing powers without triggering the catastrophe of a new Great War. The problem became even more acute when this new world war could be nuclear. We have thus invented the strategy of the "reckless pedestrian" who suddenly enters the roadway and blocks traffic or even that of the "artichoke" where we seize the target sheet by sheet, often by careless pedestrians. Nazi Germany practiced both in the 1930s, tearing out every leaf - reestablishment of military service, remilitarization of the Rhineland, Anschluss, annexation of Bohemia and Moravia - with blitzkriegs, until the attempt to too much in Poland. The Soviet Union-Russia has often practiced this, the flash annexation of Crimea in February 2014 for example.
Since last summer, the Ukrainians have undoubtedly been testing a new modus operandi precisely to reconquer this same Crimea: the progressive scalding of the frog. The problem is complex for them since it is a question of eventually taking over a territory considered to be part of the national territory by a nuclear power. On July 17, 2022, the Deputy Secretary of the Security Council of Russia and former Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, declared that the attack on Crimea would be considered an attack on the heart of Russian territory and that hitting its two strategic sites: the Kerch bridge which connects the peninsula to Russia or the naval base of Sevastopol would cause the "day of the last judgment" in Ukraine, in other words nuclear strikes. Even if we were already used to the outrageous declarations of Dmitri Medvedev, the nuclear threat, carried since the beginning of the war by Vladimir Putin and Sergei Lavrov his Minister of Foreign Affairs, is nevertheless taken seriously by many experts. The possibility of a Ukrainian attack from the air, and even less from the ground, in Crimea then seems remote, but many believe that in a context where Ukraine has no means of responding in the same way, a nuclear strike would be possible in order to deter any other aggression on Russian soil or allegedly such. According to the principle of “escalation for de-escalation”, this strike, possibly purely demonstrative to reduce the political cost, would also frighten the Ukrainians and perhaps especially the Westerners and would impose a Russian peace.
And yet, just days after Medvedev's declaration, on August 9, two explosions ravaged the Saki air base in Crimea with at least nine planes destroyed. Seven days later, a large ammunition depot exploded in northern Crimea in the Djankoï district, accompanied by sabotage. It is still unclear how these attacks could have been carried out, especially since they are not claimed. This allows the Russians to save face a little and to minimize the events by speaking, against all evidence, of accidents. Nevertheless, these first attacks demonstrated that it was possible to attack Crimea without provoking a large-scale response. So they continue. On October 1, it was the Belbek military airport, near Sevastopol, which was hit in turn, again without provoking any serious reaction. All these attacks have an obvious short-term operational interest, Crimea constituting the rear base of the Russian army group occupying part of the Ukrainian provinces of Kherson, Zaporizhia and Donetsk. Their logistics and their air support are obviously hampered by all the attacks on the axes and the bases of the Crimean peninsula. But these actions must also be understood as part of a longer-term strategy to trivialize the war in Crimea.
The Ukrainians then perform the ultimate test. On October 8, 2022, the Kerch bridge was very severely affected by a huge explosion probably caused by a truck full of explosives. This attack then constitutes a rise in temperature around the frog but the water is already hot and the rise is reduced by the absence of claims and the ambiguity of an attack a priori carried out using a truck full of explosives from Russia. The affront is therefore not as great as a direct attack claimed and carried out by surprise, but the slap is violent and almost personal towards Vladimir Putin, whose name is often attached to his bridge which he inaugurated in person at the driving a truck in 2018. However, this is not enough, or no longer enough, to defy the opinion of nations and in particular that of China – very sensitive on the subject – or the United States – which have clearly announced a conventional response to such an event. There is therefore no Russian nuclear strike and it is not even known in reality whether this option has been seriously considered by the Russian decision-making collective. But the Russians then have a conventional strike force. On October 10, more than 80 ballistic or cruise missiles fell on the interior of Ukraine. This is the first in a long series of weekly bursts on the energy grid. This operation was not organized in two days, but the link is immediately made by proximity effect between the attack on the bridge on the 8th and this response.
The problem is that “escalation for de-escalation” rarely works. Not only are the attacks on Crimea not ceasing, but they are even growing, in number through the harassment of small aerial drones and in quality with more complex attacks. Only a few days after the attack on the Kerch bridge, on October 29, it was the naval base of Sevastopol, the other major strategic site in Crimea, which was attacked by a combination of aerial drones and naval drones. At least three ships, including the frigate Admiral Makarov, are damaged. What can you do to mark the occasion when you are already doing the maximum? So that we can still make a link with the attack on Sevastopol, the effort is focused on the Ukrainian ports, bases of departure of the naval drones. This is not enough to stop the attacks, especially since Westerners, also accustomed to the idea that war can be fought in Crimea without causing a nuclear reaction, are beginning to supply long-range weapons.
On April 29, 2023, a huge fuel depot was destroyed near Sevastopol. On May 6 and 7, the Sevastopol base was attacked once again by aerial drones. On June 22, the Chongar road, one of the two roads linking Crimea to the rest of Ukraine, was hit by four Storm Shadow airborne missiles, a first. Above all, on the morning of Monday July 17, the Kerch bridge was again attacked, this time by naval drone. This new attack on a strategic target is fully claimed this time by the Ukrainians in an official statement which also retrospectively assumes all previous actions. Two days later, a large ammunition depot in Kirovski, not far from Kerch, exploded, then another on July 22 in Krasnogvardeysk, in the center of the peninsula.
But as attacks on Crimea increase, Russia's non-nuclear response capacity is now reduced since the stock of modern missiles is now at its lowest. The Russians are raking the bottoms of drawers by mixing the few dozen modern cruise missiles that they still manufacture each month with drones and anti-ship missiles, including the very old and very inaccurate KH22/32. To establish a link with the naval drone attack, these disparate projectiles are launched for several days on Ukrainian ports, Odessa in particular. These strikes have no military interest and further damage Russia's image by hitting cultural sites in particular. Above all, we are very far from the possibilities of crushing, even simply conventional, that we imagined before the war or even from the salvos of Iskander or Kalibr at the start of the war. The strikes on Odessa are also a demonstration of impotence.
The Russian power has also lost a lot of credibility in its ability to overcome this impotence to go higher. Michel Debré explained that it would be difficult to be credible in the threat of the use of nuclear weapons if we were otherwise weak. It is not clear in this respect that the treatment of the mutiny of Yevgeny Prigojine and Wagner on June 24, from the terrible punishment announced in the morning to the arrangement in the evening, reinforced the nuclear credibility of Vladimir Putin. To be dissuasive, it is necessary to frighten and by dint of useless threats, the Russian power is less and less frightening. In short, Crimea is now fully in the war and if one day Ukrainian forces land there, first punctually during raids, then in force – a very hypothetical and distant prospect for the moment – we already know, or at least we now believes that this will not cause nuclear war. It is already a lot.