Ukrainian forces struck a Russian radar station used in coordination with air defense systems near the village of Rozdolne in northwestern Crimea early on Jan. 30, the Ukrainian military reported.
As the full-scale war has developed, military facilities and infrastructure in Russian-occupied Crimea have become increasingly vulnerable to long-range Ukrainian drone and missile strikes.
Most spectacularly, separate Ukrainian strikes in September 2023, reportedly with British-made Storm Shadow missiles, destroyed a Russian landing ship, submarine, and the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.
The Ukrainian military didn’t specify which weapons were used to hit the radar system on Jan. 30.
Neither Moscow-installed occupation authorities in Crimea nor the Russian Defense Ministry reported on the attack near Rozdolne.
Yurii Ihnat, a spokesperson for Ukraine's Air Force, said on Jan. 20 that Russia’s air defense was thinning out, with a sufficient capacity on Ukraine's front lines and in occupied Crimea but not on Russian soil.
According to the U.K. Defense Ministry’s Nov. 2 intelligence update, Ukrainian strikes had destroyed at least four Russian surface-to-air missile (SAM) launchers located in occupied territories in one week.
Russia's high-tech, expensive SAM systems have reportedly suffered significant losses due to Ukraine's introduction of modern precision strike weapons onto the battlefield.
In order to compensate for the losses in Ukraine, Russia was probably forced to cycle out air defense systems from other locations, such as within Russia, which could have weakened its defenses there, the ministry wrote.
Dinara Khalilova
