
20 days · 9 summary articles
Ukrainian drone strikes on Tuesday night crippled a key electricity supply link to occupied Crimea and hit five substations, as Moscow scrambled to contain a widening fuel crisis by banning diesel exports until 31 July. Commander Robert “Madyar” Brovdi of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces said the attack on the PP-2 “Crimea” station severed part of the Kuban-Crimea energy bridge, the underwater cable that carries Russian electricity into the peninsula . Ukraine’s Defence Ministry also reported strikes on three Russian air-defence radar systems and a training ground overnight.
The energy offensive is deepening Russia’s domestic fuel shortage. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak told President Vladimir Putin that diesel exports would be halted “to increase supplies on the domestic market,” a move that follows repeated Ukrainian drone raids on refineries and storage sites across southern and Siberian Russia . Novak acknowledged that Russia would now need to import fuel to stabilise supplies. State news agency TASS quoted Putin as saying, “It is clear that the enemy is trying to damage the economy, but most importantly, it is trying to create a nervous situation in society” .
Russia is also stepping up electronic warfare to blunt Ukraine’s mid-range drone campaign, which relies heavily on Elon Musk’s Starlink network. Serhii Beskrestnov, an adviser to Ukraine’s defence ministry, said Moscow has deployed at least ten “Volna Kupol Garant” jamming systems that can disrupt Starlink links across roughly 20 square kilometres each . Ukrainian drone crews have already destroyed two of the installations in joint operations with the SBU security service; one site was struck within hours of detection. “As soon as we struck that installation, our Starlink-equipped drones flew without problems,” said a crew commander using the callsign “Dyryhent.”
On the Black Sea, a Ukrainian Sea Baby naval drone hit the crude-oil tanker *Blue*, part of Russia’s so-called shadow fleet, on Tuesday morning . Kyiv’s Unmanned Systems Forces said its forces had confirmed hits on 21 vessels—including 19 tankers—and 53 military targets in Crimea and southern Ukraine over the past 72 hours .
In Kyiv, a Russian drone strike on a gas transmission facility killed two people and injured eight on Tuesday, raising the city’s toll from recent attacks . Regional authorities in Belgorod meanwhile pleaded for faster restoration of water and electricity after repeated Ukrainian strikes left infrastructure failures unresolved .
Former Ukrainian commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi warned against assuming Russia has lost the war, writing in *The Telegraph* that Moscow still possesses significant capacity to inflict damage .
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