(ZAPORIZHZHIA OBLAST, UKRAINE) – Ukraine is methodically severing the Russia’s remaining military and logistical arteries in occupied Crimea, turning the illegally annexed peninsula into a besieged and starving outpost that can no longer project naval power, according to a new battlefield assessment.
Philip Ingram, a former senior British military intelligence officer and NATO planner, presented a detailed analysis for Frontline showing that Ukrainian forces have rendered Crimea militarily useless to the Kremlin by destroying rail ferries, stripping air defences and preparing a decisive blow to the Kerch Bridge.
“The Ukrainians have sunk them,” Ingram said, referring to the rail ferries the Russian occupation relied upon to move military trains into Crimea. “Therefore there is very little ability for the Russians to get anything into Crimea unless it is by road or the rail link on the Kerch Bridge.”
The assessment, produced with maps from the Institute for the Study of War, reveals a systematic strangulation campaign. All air defences around the crossing have been taken down and Ukrainian strikes are now targeting power stations on the Russian side of the link between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.
Ingram warned that the Kerch Bridge, the Russian dictator’s prestige project built to connect occupied Crimea to Russia, faces imminent destruction. “We saw a couple of years ago a massive truck explosion that lifted one of the spans of the road bridge and destroyed that and it took the Russians almost a year to fix that,” he said. “I from an assessment perspective would suggest there is something like that coming soon. The Kerch bridge will be no more.”
The consequences for the civilian population in Crimea are severe. The Kremlin installed leadership in the peninsula has issued a decree halting all fuel supplies to civilians, reserving remaining stocks solely for emergency services and military purposes.
“Crimea is being slowly starved not just of fuel, but of food and of water,” Ingram stated. “And this is almost getting to the old siege tactics. And if Crimea is denied, that is the jewel and the crown for Vladimir Putin. That is the one bit he wants to keep if there is any peace settlement in the future.”
The loss of Crimea as a military launchpad is already reshaping Russian operations. The Ukrainian Navy has shut down most naval activity originating from the peninsula, which Moscow previously used as a stationary aircraft carrier and a massive logistics base to supply its occupation forces in southern Ukraine.
“The Russians are losing that and that means they are going to have to bring in even more from Russia,” Ingram said. “And the roads bringing in even more are controlled by Ukrainian drones. So life is getting interesting.”
Footage released by Ukrainian military units shows the grinding reality across the thousand kilometre front, a distance Ingram compared to the stretch between Aberdeen and London. The assessment describes a battlefield stalemate roughly 12 to 15 kilometres deep, where reports of advances and counteroffensives mask an inability by Russian forces to concentrate sufficient combat power for a breakthrough.
“Ukraine is controlling the majority of the frontline positions by its drones, FPV drone control,” Ingram explained. “The Russians are trying to attack in but are not able to concentrate the forces enough to break through.”
The contested fortress city of Kostiantynivka in the Donbas region has emerged as a focal point of Russian offensive efforts. Moscow claims to have occupied the city. Ukrainian forces insist no Russian troops hold it. Ingram placed the number of Russian soldiers inside the city at between 150 and 200, warning they are employing the same brutal block by block clearance tactics used in Pokrovsk and Bakhmut.
“It is as bloody as Pokrovsk and Bakhmut,” he said. “So it is going to cost them thousands and thousands or tens of thousands of casualties to take the city.”
Russian forces are advancing small groups, taking geolocated photographs to claim territory before withdrawing, Ingram said. Even if Kostiantynivka were to fall, he dismissed any suggestion that the remaining fortress belt cities of Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk would collapse quickly, noting that Bakhmut and Pokrovsk each took between 18 months and two years for Russian forces to capture.
“Do the Russians have the ability and the strength to do that? No, not with what the Ukrainians are doing elsewhere,” Ingram stated.
In the Zaporizhzhia region, a drone pilot from the Predators special combat police unit, a 27 year old with the call sign Raccoon, confirmed that Russian forces attack Ukrainian positions near Mala Tokmachka every few days but fail to secure lasting gains. Russia’s defence ministry had claimed its forces captured the settlement in November 2025, describing it as part of a broader advance in the region.
“This is a typical example of where the Russians have claimed that they have got somewhere,” Ingram said. “That has been reported up in Moscow and the reality from the front lines is they have not actually got that.”
Video released by the Predators unit showed drone launches from positions in the Mala Tokmachka front sector.
In the Black Sea, Russia continues to target civilian merchant shipping. On 22 June, the Ukrainian Navy confirmed that the Victress, a Turkish dry cargo vessel sailing under a Panamanian flag, was attacked by Russian forces. An Egyptian cook was killed and eight other crew members, including Turkish and Indian nationals, were evacuated on a lifeboat. Reuters confirmed that video of the incident matched official reports. The operator, Turkey’s Rana Denizcilik, could not immediately be reached for comment.
“Russia remains the main threat in the Black Sea for security and prosperity region reasons,” the Ukrainian foreign minister said.
In a significant blow to Russia’s military industrial capacity, Ukrainian forces struck a high specification electronics production plant in Voronezh, Russia. The attack, carried out with what are believed to be UK supplied Storm Shadow or French Scalp cruise missiles, triggered a huge plume of smoke and eliminated an undisclosed number of specialised personnel.
Video of the strike showed a massive column of smoke billowing from the facility, which manufactures electronics for the KH 101 cruise missiles, Kinzhal hypersonic missiles and Russia’s wider military aerospace industry.
“Russia does not have many of these and it is under real pressure from international embargo to get the electronics it needs for its high end weapon systems,” Ingram said. “This will be a major blow not just because the production line will be taken offline for a significant period of time but a major blow because Russia may not be able to replace a lot of what is needed in the production line because it is under international embargo.”
He added that the loss of trained scientists and engineers was likely irreplaceable, particularly given that a large portion of Russia’s workforce is either fighting on the front line or being supplemented by workers brought in from Southeast Asian countries or North Korea.
“They cannot replace these sorts of high end scientists and engineers,” Ingram said. “A significant blow for Russia and a significant success for Ukraine.”
The footage of the Voronezh strike was released by Ukrainian military sources.