Dozens of explosions were reported in Ukraine and near Russian-occupied Crimea early on Wednesday, as both sides stepped up air attacks ahead of an expected counter-offensive by Kyiv to recapture lost territory.
Much is riding on Ukraine’s long-anticipated counter-offensive more than a year into Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country. Military analysts say that it is not only important for Kyiv to win back land but also to convince its western partners of the need to send more military assistance.
Experts say a series of drone attacks in Russia and in Russian-occupied territory in recent days that Moscow has blamed on Kyiv have been seen as Ukraine preparing the battlefield ahead of its operation.
Anticipating Ukraine’s move, Russia has increased the number of air attacks across the country.
Air raid sirens sounded throughout the Ukrainian capital shortly after midnight followed by a series of explosions that the military said were from its air defences.
Ukraine’s air force command said in a statement that Russian forces had launched up to 26 Iran-made kamikaze drones. Its air defences intercepted 21 of them, it added.
“The capital of Ukraine was subjected to another air attack by the enemy. The third in the last six days,” said Serhiy Popko, head of the capital’s military administration. “According to preliminary information, all enemy targets were identified and shot down in the airspace around the capital.”
Officials in the central Ukrainian province of Kirovohrad reported that a drone strike hit a fuel depot.
The flurry of air strikes follows a lull in Russian missile and drone attacks after a months-long barrage against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure over the autumn and winter.
Over the course of the war, Ukrainian officials have refrained from confirming most attacks on Russian territory, but Russia’s Tass news agency reported on Wednesday that a drone had hit a fuel depot in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region.
Veniamin Kondratyev, governor of the southern region, said in a Telegram channel post that the “highest category” of fire had broken out at a fuel depot in the village of Volna. The Kerch bridge stretches from there to Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, which Moscow occupied in 2014.
Russian officials have blamed Ukraine for conducting drone strikes in Crimea in the past days, including an attack on Saturday that set ablaze a fuel depot in Sevastopol, the port base for Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
Before Ukraine launches a counter-offensive to liberate about 18 per cent of territory in the south-east occupied by Russia, using tanks and weaponry supplied by the west, it is expected to increase efforts to neutralise the military threat from Crimea. Moscow has heavily militarised the peninsula and used it as a staging post for its full-scale invasion.
Strikes on fuel depots, military bases and logistical centres could disrupt Russia’s supply lines to its forces in southern and eastern Ukraine. The Kerch bridge, a supply line for Russia’s forces in Crimea, was temporarily shut down last year after an explosion and remains a top target for Ukraine.
The Baza Telegram channel, a Russian law enforcement-friendly news outlet, citing sources, reported that drones had also struck a Russian air base in Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine to the north.
An explosion in Bryansk on Monday derailed a freight train, igniting a large fire and flipping several cars on their sides, video footage showed. Aleksandr Bogomaz, Bryansk province governor, blamed the incident on an “unidentified explosive device”, state media reported.
“Undoubtedly Ukrainians are shaping the battlefield not only by attacking Crimea and Russia proper, but also through PSYOPS,” or military operations generally aimed at influencing the enemy psychologically, said Konrad Muzyka, an independent defence analyst and director of Rochan Consulting, which tracks the war in Ukraine.
Muzyka pointed to reports of evacuation notices that had appeared in Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia province in recent days as evidence of those psychological operations.
Russia’s FSB state security service said on Wednesday it had detained Ukrainian intelligence agents in Crimea plotting sabotage and detected a smuggling channel used to bring explosives into Russia from Bulgaria “disguised as electric stoves”.