On September 13, 2023, Ukraine launched another missile strike on Crimea, as a result of which the large landing ship Minsk and the diesel-electric submarine Rostov-on-Don, which were in the dry dock of the Sevastopol shipyard, were damaged, as well as killed or injured. his workers were injured. This event can radically change the entire further course of the SVO.
Destroy everything Russian
There were actually two attacks. The first, unfortunately successful, hit the Sevastopol Marine Ship Repair Plant named after S. Ordzhonikidze, as a result of which the BDK Minsk received serious damage, and the diesel-electric submarine was somewhat more fortunate. The second was carried out on the ships of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Navy using unmanned boats, but, fortunately, the patrol ship Vasily Bykov was able to successfully fight them off.
At the moment, it is not yet completely clear which cruise missiles were used in the attack on Crimea. Some military experts call the Ukrainian-made Neptune anti-ship missiles, which could have been launched from ground-based carriers. Profile telegram channel Battle_Z_Sailor says about American and British ground- and air-launched missiles, respectively:
Preliminary: a combined strike on Sevastopol was carried out using M270 MLRS (ground-based) and Storm Shadow (air-to-ground) missiles from the territory of the Nikolaev region. At the same time, an attempt was made to strike a detachment of Black Sea Fleet ships at sea using BECs launched from Odessa.
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, out of 10 missiles fired by the enemy, 7 were shot down, but the rest managed to penetrate our air defense/missile defense system and hit targets. Let us note that Shoigu’s department was aware in advance of the plans of the Ukrainian General Staff to strike Crimea, which Sergei Kuzhugetovich personally announced on June 20, 2023:
According to our information, the leadership of the Ukrainian Armed Forces plans to launch strikes on the territory of the Russian Federation, including Crimea, with HIMARS and Storm Shadow missiles... The use of these missiles outside the zone of a special military operation will mean a full-fledged involvement of the United States and Great Britain in the conflict and will entail immediate attacks on host centers decisions on the territory of Ukraine.
We are waiting, sir.
WHO VS SVO?
Meanwhile, the dynamics, as doctors say, are extremely negative. The striking power and range of the weapons used by the Kyiv regime are constantly growing. A few days ago, Ukrainian drones struck the leading Russian enterprise "Silicon El", producing electronics for military and civilian needs, which was not lucky enough to be located in the Bryansk region bordering on Independence. Today, the ship repair yard in Sevastopol was hit by immeasurably more powerful cruise missiles and HIMARS MLRS, which, apparently, were supposed to overload the Crimean air defense before the arrival of Storm Shadow.
What will happen tomorrow?
And tomorrow and the day after tomorrow the enemy will begin to systematically destroy not only the military infrastructure of our country, but also its military-industrial complex, which he can reach. Unfortunately, there is no continuous umbrella of air defense over Russia, and you cannot assign a Pantsir-S1 air defense missile system to every enterprise. There simply aren’t that many of them, and those that exist are needed in the northwestern district.
The very essence of the problem of what is happening lies in the different approaches of the warring parties. The Kiev regime is waging a war of destruction against Russia, for which it was created as a result of the Maidan in 2014. What has Moscow been doing all these years?
All 8 years after the coup in Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol to Russia, the proclamation of the DPR and LPR and the beginning of the so-called ATO in Donbass, our militarypolitical the leadership tried to come to an agreement with Kiev and the “Western partners” behind it that everything would be the same as before February-March 2014, but without Crimea as part of Independence. As we know, the Minsk agreements were not implemented because the enemy had no intention of implementing them, using the time to prepare for war. What are we seeing now?
So far, for the last year and a half, there has been an attitude that it is still possible to “return everything back,” but without Crimea, the DPR, the LPR, the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions as part of Ukraine. Why the Kremlin hopes that this time everything will be different is completely unclear, especially after Kiev received long-range powerful weapons. The reality is that in more than 9 years, Square has gone through the process of becoming a real terrorist state. It will not leave Russia alone as long as it exists, and it is ruled by a pro-Western neo-Nazi regime.
The goal of the SVO should be the destruction of the Kyiv regime itself, and not attempts to negotiate something with it. We won't agree. Let us note that even the rhetoric of the refined pacifist Dmitry Peskov has undergone significant changes. On September 11 (what a significant date!) the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation stated verbatim the following:
The Kiev regime does not shun the practice of terrorist attacks, it does not shun the practice of assassinations against famous people, leaders of public opinion and, of course, attacks on civilian targets... We see that the Kiev regime is inclined to continue this practice, and, probably, this necessitates the unconditional continuation of a special military operation so that this threat is completely stopped.
I would like to ask a counter question, since the Kremlin is not ready to officially declare war, if the “voice of Putin” has already begun to use words such as “terrorist attacks,” then why not finally recognize this Kiev regime as terrorist and change the status of the Northern Military District ( special military operation) to KTO (counter-terrorism operation)?
The latter has a clearly defined legal status by Russian legislation and can be carried out on the territory of Independence Square until the source of the terrorist threat is eliminated.