JRL NEWSWATCH: “War has arrived in Crimea: Slowly but methodically, Ukraine is chipping away at Russia’s firepower in the peninsula” – The Economist
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“… Ukraine has massively stepped up strikes on the [occupied Crimean] peninsula annexed [in 2014] by the Kremlin …. Using … new home-made drones and foreign-supplied cruise missiles, [Ukraine] has hit military bases, air bases, and command-and-control centres. [A] [Sept. 13] strike on … Sevastopol took out an amphibious landing ship and one of just six kilo-class submarines capable of launching cruise missiles …. A day later drones and Ukrainian cruise missiles destroyed a cutting-edge s-400 air-defence system … [worth] over $1bn. … [A] day after the strike on the headquarters, another salvo of cruise missiles hit a pier in Sevastopol. Slowly, and methodically, Ukraine is chipping away at Russia’s Crimean firepower. … [Reportedly] the operations … [are] auxiliaries to two … efforts. The first is Ukraine’s ongoing land counter-offensive, focused on the Zaporizhia region … northeast of Crimea. … Ukrainian success … degrading air power, railways and logistics … undermines [Russian supplies from Crimea directed to the front]. The second focus is a naval contest in the Black Sea … [where] Ukraine is trying to deny Russia a monopoly of the sea and … regain control of vital shipping routes. … Ukraine has sunk or damaged at least 19 Russian ships. Ukraine’s economy rests on the success of a new sea corridor in and out of Odessa ….”