Crimea as a military base: why Ukraine strikes supply routes
Kyiv • UNN
Russia uses Crimea as a rear base for the war, so Ukraine attacks transport routes. The Karabakh experience shows that the territory ceases to be an instrument of Moscow when control over supply is lost.
Russia uses Crimea not only as occupied territory, but also as a stable rear base for the war in southern Ukraine. Railway and road routes provide fuel, ammunition, and equipment, without which the peninsula's military infrastructure loses effectiveness – therefore, Ukrainian strikes are aimed at the communication system itself, not just individual objects. The Karabakh experience provides a broader context: a territory ceases to be an instrument of Moscow when it loses the ability to maintain the order it has created. Telegraph writes about this.
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Moscow has been gathering such footholds in the post-Soviet space since the early 1990s:
- Transnistria – since 1992;
- Abkhazia and South Ossetia – after the 2008 war;
- Crimea and part of Donbas – since 2014;
- Karabakh – since 1991, where after the Second Karabakh War, Russian presence was cemented by "peacekeepers".
The scheme is the same everywhere: a protracted conflict that Russia fuels and exploits, Kremlin-loyal functionaries on the ground, and its own military contingent as insurance. In over thirty years, this system has failed only once – in September 2023, when Azerbaijan regained Karabakh in a day, depriving Moscow of its foothold.
In Karabakh, Russia assigned itself the role of an indispensable arbiter, and until then it seemed unshakable. The trilateral agreement of November 2020 granted the Kremlin the right to keep up to two thousand troops in the region, and key positions in the unrecognized "NKR" were held by people directly connected to Moscow. In 2022, its "state minister" became "Putin's wallet" Ruben Vardanyan – a billionaire who previously headed "Troika Dialog", through which, according to an OCCRP investigation, non-public payments to Kremlin-linked figures flowed for years. The appointment was read unambiguously: Moscow was not leaving, but entrenching itself.
The denouement came quickly. On September 19–20, 2023, the Azerbaijani army broke through the separatist defenses in a day, the "NKR" announced its self-dissolution, and its leadership, along with Vardanyan, ended up in a Baku pre-trial detention center. Russian peacekeepers did not intervene and left early in June 2024. Russia has become so weakened and lost its levers of influence that even Yerevan, a long-time ally of Moscow, has begun rapprochement with the EU.
Disruption of supplies does not automatically mean the liberation of Crimea, but it weakens one of the foundations of the occupation. The more difficult it is for Russia to supply the peninsula, the fewer opportunities it has to use it for operations in the south. Ukraine seeks to change the very role of Crimea – from a Russian stronghold into a source of constant costs and risks. This is the strategic meaning of strikes on transport infrastructure.