White House ‘skeptical’ about effectiveness of Ukrainian strikes on Crimea — report
Several senior U.S. officials view the
Ukrainian strategy of carrying out missile
strikes on occupied Crimea with skepticism, CNN reported on Aug. 18.
To some military and White House officials, Ukrainian attacks on Crimea are a distraction at best, and a waste of valuable resources on a strategy that, many analysts believe, has stretched Ukraine thin among multiple attack vectors.
“It’s knocked the Russians off balance a bit, but it is not doing anything decisive,” CNN quotes a senior security official.
“And it would probably be better for everyone for them to just focus on the counteroffensive.”
According to a high-ranking Western intelligence official, approximately a third of the occupied peninsula is currently within reach of HIMARS rocket artillery systems provided by the United States, enabling Ukraine to step up strikes on Russian ammunition depots and logistics infrastructure.
“There’s more and more pressure on Crimea, and especially so in recent weeks; I mean, they get pounded,” the official said.
A Ukrainian source familiar with the Kyiv’s military strategy stated that the attacks are an integral part of their counteroffensive strategy aimed at isolating Crimea and complicating Russia's conduct of military operations on the Ukrainian mainland.
On July 17, the Crimean Bridge was rocked by explosions for the second time since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, after which all traffic across it was halted. Russian authorities acknowledge that they will not be able to restore it in full until late 2023.
Head of Ukraine’s SBU security service, Vasyl Malyuk, later told journalists that the bridge was attacked by a naval drone, the result of many months of development that commenced immediately after the Russian invasion.
This marked the first time that a Ukrainian official confirmed Kyiv was behind an attack on the key bridge connecting occupied Crimea to mainland Russia.
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