Ukraine has stepped up its strikes on Crimea as part of a strategy to isolate the occupied peninsula from mainland Russia and raise the cost of the occupation.
On Sunday, Russian-installed authorities suspended civilian fuel sales until at least Wednesday, a move that underscored Ukraine’s growing ability to disrupt supply lines linking Crimea to Russia.
“Fuel will be sold only to government agencies that ensure the functioning and security of the Republic of Crimea,” the Russian-appointed governor, Sergei Aksyonov, said. “I ask everyone to remain calm and only trust official sources of information.”
Local authorities also announced that parts of the peninsula would be left without street lighting and that all public events had been cancelled.
A wave of Ukrainian medium-range strikes has targeted occupied Crimea and the transport routes connecting it to Russia in recent weeks. Kyiv hopes to turn the peninsula “into an island” by disrupting Russian supply chains and isolating Crimea from mainland Russia.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on Sunday that a Crimean oil depot and an oil transport facility in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region were among the targets. He described the attacks as part of Ukraine’s campaign of “long-range sanctions” against Russia.
Ukrainian Telegram channels also reported that Kyiv had struck at least three Russian ferries transporting vehicles operating on the Kerch crossing between Crimea and mainland Russia.
Ukraine has focused its strikes on the main transport routes supplying Crimea, particularly the Novorossiya highway, a key logistics corridor linking the peninsula to Russia’s Rostov region through the occupied cities of Melitopol and Mariupol.
Russia had already sharply restricted traffic on the Kerch Bridge, the other major route connecting Crimea to Russia. Moscow has largely stopped using the bridge for rail fuel shipments since a 2022 Ukrainian attack damaged the crossing and set a fuel train ablaze.
The recent strikes have left residents queueing for hours at petrol stations, dealing a significant blow to Crimea’s economy during the peak holiday season, when tens of thousands of Russian tourists normally visit the peninsula. Yelena Shtringel, the director of the tour company TurEtno, told the RBC news site that about 80% of June bookings had been cancelled, while roughly half of reservations for July and August had also been abandoned.
“I want to go back to Moscow. This is just horrible,” one Russian tourist said in a video circulating online after her train service in Crimea was suspended over the weekend owing to another Ukrainian drone attack.
On Monday, Aksyonov said all children’s summer camps would be cancelled until September, the latest sign of the growing disruption caused by the attacks. With other routes under strain, Russian voices close to the Kremlin suggested that Ukraine was likely to intensify its efforts to target the Kerch bridge in the coming weeks.
“The pressure on the Crimean [Kerch] Bridge will clearly increase in the coming weeks as part of Ukraine’s strategy to sever links between Crimea and the mainland … the strikes will intensify,” wrote Rybar, a pro-war Telegram channel with 1.5 million followers run by a former Russian defence ministry official.
“We need to prepare for such a scenario in advance and understand what weapons the Ukrainian armed forces might use,” the channel added.
The 12-mile-long Kerch bridge, also known as the Crimean Bridge, is the jewel in the crown of Putin’s infrastructure projects – described by Russian media as the “construction of the century” intended to reify Russia’s claimed ownership of Crimea.
The bridge was severely damaged in October 2022, when a truck bomb detonated on Putin’s 70th birthday, collapsing sections of the roadway and setting a fuel train ablaze. Although Moscow has since strengthened its defences around the crossing, it remains one of Ukraine’s most important targets.