Ukraine has admitted it carried out missile strikes on military facilities in Crimea in August, including the Saki airfield. The news was confirmed in an article for Ukrinform by Valeriy Zaluzhnyy, commander-in-chief of the AFU, and Mikhail Zabrodsky, deputy chairman of the Verkhovna Rada committee for national security issues.
In their article, Zaluzhny and Zabrodsky say that most Russians don't feel the closeness of war; its perceived “remoteness” means that its failures and casualties are not painful enough for them; they are not aware of the price of war. From the authors’ point of view, this is what needs to be changed.
“A convincing example of the correctness of this approach this year is the successful efforts of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to physically relocate combat operations to the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea. We are talking about a series of successful missile strikes on the enemy's air bases in Crimea, primarily the Saki airfield,” the authors of the article say.
The editorial footnote says up to 10 Russian Su-24 and Su-30M aircraft were taken out as a result of the August 9 “combined strike” on the Saki airfield.
The AFU commander-in-chief also believes that the war will not end in 2022. He does not rule out that the Russians will attack to seize Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro and will return to the idea of capturing Kyiv. The most realistic plans of the Russian military, in his view, are in the south - in the direction of Mykolaiv, Odessa or Kryvyi Rih.
In August, there were powerful explosions at the Saki airfield near Novofedorivka, when the airbase was attacked. According to media reports, 9 to 12 Russian planes were destroyed. At the time, Kyiv hinted that the strikes had been carried out by the AFU, while the Russian Defense Ministry said that “no external impacts occurred,” but it was rather a detonation of several aircraft munitions. No aviation equipment was damaged, according to the Russian military.