The Ukrainian commando raids that have successfully attacked Russian positions in the Crimean Peninsula recently, and are part of a larger campaign using drones and missiles, have helped degrade Kremlin forces and demoralize the Russian public, The New York Times reported over the weekend.
Since midsummer a series of punishing Ukrainian assaults have succeeded in disabling some Russian air-defense systems and damaging naval repair yards at Sevastopol, which is on the west coast of Crimea.
The resulting partial retreat of the Russian Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol, its base for more than 200 years, has helped Ukraine break a blockade and keep some shipping moving in the Black Sea.
Ukrainian military leaders have long stated their intention to regain control of Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014 and has vowed to keep.
Although the Ukrainian campaign began a year ago, it was intensified with this summer's counteroffensive, when Ukrainian forces started targeting Crimea with missile strikes deep behind the frontline.
The aim was to disrupt the Russian military's logistics and degrade its ability to function.
The series of attacks have rattled the Russian public. From a peak of nine million in 2019, the number of Russian tourists visiting Crimea decreased to six million last year and barely four million so far this year, local officials said, according to The New York Times.
Thousands of Russians who settled in Crimea or purchased real estate there after it was annexed are selling their properties, and prices have plummeted, said Lyudmyla Denisova, a former Ukrainian lawmaker who has family members living in Crimea, adding that "every successful Ukrainian strike complicates life in Crimea."
The most devastating blows came last month, when missiles hit a Russian submarine and a landing ship in the dry docks of the port of Sevastopol. A week later, the Ukrainian forces fired long-range missiles into the command headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet, also in Sevastopol, an operation in which dozens of Russian officers were wounded.
Alongside the missile strikes, Ukrainian commandos also took control of the Boyko Towers — a group of gas drilling rigs in the western Black Sea that Russia captured in 2014 but had since abandoned — and dismantled a surveillance antenna.
In August, Ukrainian commandos made their first known raid on Crimea since 2016, attacking a Russian base on Cape Tarkhankut, which houses an antenna and systems that jam electronic communications over a wide area.
"Thanks to this antenna they see everything in the sea," said a commander of the Bratstvo group, which carried out the raid, identified by his call sign, Borghese.
Borghese said the major achievement of the operation was to alter perceptions, showing emphatically that Ukrainian forces could reach the Crimean shore and demonstrating to the Russian public that Crimea was no longer a safe place.
"It raises our Ukrainian morale and it diminishes Russian and Crimean morale," Borghese said. "They cannot relax on these beaches anymore."