Ukraine’s Crimean strike marks a new stage of the war

For most Russians, the brutal realities of Vladimir Putin's 'special military operation' have not really struck home. Ukraine's attack on the Saki airbase near Novofedorivka in western Crimea on Tuesday begins to change all that, marking a new stage of the war, one with both dangers and opportunities for Kyiv.

The Kremlin’s spin doctors tried to claim that the explosions filmed by horrified Russian holidaymakers were caused by an ammunition fire. However, as videos began going viral on Russian social media, there was no question in the posters' minds but that this was an attack. They voted with their feet, or at least their wheels, and the Kerch Bridge connecting Crimea to the mainland became one long traffic jam as panicked holidaymakers fled the peninsula.

Some are claiming the attack was the result of a sabotage operation, others a long-range missile strike. If it’s the former, it demonstrates serious weaknesses in Russian rear area security, given that Crimea has been heavily reinforced and under their control since 2014. If it’s the latter, then Ukraine has some new capability, either home-made or secretly supplied by the West, as until now it was not believed to have weapons capable of delivering precision strikes against targets more than 200 km from the front line.

Kyiv denied any responsibility, but with the kind of knowing wink that has been Putin's trademark in the past. Speaking later that day, president Volodymyr Zelensky did not refer to the blasts in his speech, but did dwell on the fate of the peninsula. Noting that 'the Russian war against Ukraine began with the occupation of Crimea,' he stressed that the war equally 'must end with Crimea – with its liberation.'

In its own way, this was every bit as significant as the Saki strikes. Many western governments have long privately encouraged Zelensky to accept that he may eventually have to surrender Crimea as the price for peace, or at the very least counselled 'strategic ambiguity' – leaving the Russians guessing, and retaining some diplomatic wriggle room for the future. Zelensky has shown himself time and again supremely uninterested in the usual diplomatic etiquette.

Militarily, the attack represents an expanded threat to Russian facilities. It will mean Russia will have to further disperse its supply depots – which makes logistics even more difficult – and create a new need for rear area defences even further from the front line. Protecting the Kerch Bridge, the only viable resupply route to the peninsula, becomes even more of a priority.

More to the point, the attack is a powerful political blow. Zelensky has signalled in an emphatic way that Putin should not presume that this is a war that can be confined to Ukrainian soil. There have been sporadic cross-border attacks before this, but the Saki strike is both symbolic and being played out across Russian social media.

According to a recent poll reported in the newspaper Kommersant, only just over half of Russians (52 per cent) support continuing the war, with more than a third (38 per cent) favouring peace talks. Crucially, almost two thirds (62 per cent) believe that Russia’s special operation is 'definitely' or 'rather' successful.

Russians' tolerance for the war is to a large extent a result of the barrage of toxic propaganda pumped out on TV, the ruthless crackdown on independent media and dissenting opinion, and the efforts to conceal the scale of Russian losses.

In the face of incidents like Saki, it becomes harder and harder for the Kremlin to maintain the pretence that this is a 'nice, victorious little war' (as a tsarist official once claimed the disastrous 1904-5 Russo-Japanese war would be).

Its immediate instincts will likely be to try to escalate. Former president Dmitry Medvedev has become something of a laughing stock, especially as he tries to reinvent himself as a hawk, but his threat last month that 'Judgment Day will instantly await' if Ukraine hit Crimea probably does reflect the view of Putin's hardline inner circle. After all, for them this is something of an existential political struggle. If they lose in Ukraine, they may lose Moscow, too.

But this war is existential for Ukraine too, and the Saki attack is a clear sign that Kyiv can also escalate this conflict.