Nicolas Cinquini

In the morning of August 16, 2022, explosions are rocking an ablaze ammunition depot near Dzhankoy, northeastern Crimea. The disaster has also damaged the railway which is linking southern Russia to southern Ukraine, through the peninsula, a Russian logistic line of communication. The Russian defense ministry states that the blaze is the result of a sabotage.

The statement is new but the sabotage is the second major one in Crimea for exactly one week. On August 9, an airfield with ammunition depot has been ravaged in Novofedorovka, on the western coast, about 100 km to the southwest. Witnesses told journalists that they had not heard any sound of rocket

The psychological impact is important and tourists are leaving the peninsula, which is no more a safe Russian territory but becomes an area of the battlefield.

Saboteurs are indeed attempting to disrupt the Russian war effort, are also attacking civilian facilities. The day before, the federal security agency (FSB) managed to prevent two Russian Nazi militants from blowing up a pipeline near Volgograd, almost 1,000 km northeast of Dzhankoy

But in Crimea, the targets are more ambitious and the perpetrators, likely more professional.

Ukraine is losing the war and NATO is assessing asymmetric strategies and tactics, like the threat of a nuclear catastrophe in Energodar (ZNPP).

Ukraine takes credit for Dzhankoy, gives little details, the presidency states that Ukrainian elite forces have carried out the operation. I do not believe it. I feel the trace of Western special forces, maybe British SAS (Special Air Service).

Postscript

As valuable insight, with a grain of salt, a clue about the likely rank-and-file for such special operations, British tabloid Daily Mirror has published on February 28 an article titled Crack team of SAS veterans joining Ukraine’s bloody fight against Russian invasion.

The capture of British service members may be a political nightmare for the UK. At the beginning of the Russian special military operation in Donbass and Ukraine, the Daily Mirror has told us that two dozen former SAS and Parachute regiment members, none younger than 40, were about to join the Ukrainian forces. An unnamed European State was hiring them via a private military company, a common process.

Moreover, Boris Johnson provoked the ire of the Polish staff, when in April, he revealed a military secret : SAS were deployed in Lviv, western Ukraine, once eastern Poland. Such operatives may also plan and lead the special operations in Crimea.

For their part, the Ukrainians are in propaganda the undisputed world leaders of coarse fakes. The foreground of this scary Polaroid is obviously a famous scene from a movie that all my readers should know, Jaws (1975). The spirit is yet authentic, violent action, in order to terrorize civilians for a common political goal, is called terrorism