Inside Ukraine’s campaign to turn occupied Crimea into an ‘island’

Russian occupation representatives in annexed Crimea have shut down all children’s summer camps, rationed petrol sales to administration officials only and cancelled all public events, as Ukraine intensifies a drone and missile campaign targeting the peninsula’s fuel and energy infrastructure.

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The summer camp suspension is taking effect from Monday until 1 September and includes the “booking of places, the admission and accommodation of children and groups of children at children’s holiday and health resorts.”

“In the current circumstances, these measures are necessary to ensure public safety,” the Moscow-installed officials said.

On Sunday, rolling electricity consumption schedules were also introduced in occupied Crimea due to power supply problems.

A partial power outage reportedly occurred among consumers in the north-western, central and south coast energy districts in the Russian-occupied peninsula due to damage to power grid facilities.

In addition, Crimea’s occupation authorities announced that a new restriction on petrol sales is being introduced on the peninsula, under which fuel may only be purchased by representatives of the occupation administration.

Moscow-installed occupation authorities also announced that parts of the peninsula would be left without street lighting and that all public events had been cancelled.

Commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces Robert Brovdi, known by the call sign “Madyar,” said in a post on Telegram that strikes on the night of Sunday targeted oil terminals, gas compressors, and radar systems in occupied Crimea.

Strike campaign against Russian targets in Crimea intensifies

The US-based Institute for the Study of War think tank (ISW) confirmed Ukrainian forces continue their strike campaign to deny Russia’s ability to sustain logistics and transport fuel across the Kerch Strait.

Ukrainian military officials reported on June 21 that Ukrainian forces struck the Port of Kavkaz at the Chushka Spit, Krasnodar Krai, northeast of the Kerch Strait Bridge, setting the tank farm of the oil transhipment complex and the territory of the oil depot on fire.

Unmanned Systems Forces (USF) reported that Russia relies on the oil depot at the port of Kavkaz to supply occupied Crimea and southern Ukraine with fuel.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed on Sunday that a Crimean oil depot and an oil transport facility in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region were among the targets. He described the attacks as part of Ukraine’s campaign of “long-range sanctions” against Russia.

The 414th Separate Unmanned Strike Aviation Systems Brigade “Magyar’s Birds” — an elite drone warfare brigade within the Armed Forces of Ukraine — called Crimea “a suitcase without a handle” for Moscow, while admitting that Moscow will “cling to Crimea until the very end as the main trophy of the war.”

“There appears to be no other way to demilitarise the worms and smoke one million occupiers out of the peninsula. We know this kind of work well.”

Methodically cutting Crimea off from Russia

Crimea’s geographic position is both strategically important and unusually complex, sitting between mainland Ukraine, Russia and the wider Black Sea region.

In the north, Crimea is tied to Moscow‑occupied southern Ukraine by a narrow land corridor across the Perekop isthmus and a web of roads and rail lines running through the parts of Kherson region that have been under occupation since early 2022.

Moscow is using these ground lines of communication to move troops, ammunition and fuel to the peninsula.

This is the area that Kyiv has been systematically targeting to disrupt those flows.

On top of that, Kyiv forces are also targeting military logistics sites and energy objects on the other side of the illegally built Kerch Bridge – the only link between annexed Crimea and Russia.

The span was struck in October 2022 by a truck bomb, killing five people, blowing up two sections of the bridge and resulting in months of repairs. More attacks on the bridge followed in 2023 and 2025.

Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine, launched 12 years ago, started with the annexation of Crimea, a strategically important peninsula in southern Ukraine jutting into the Black Sea.

Since then, Ukraine repeatedly said that for Kyiv the war will not be considered fully over until Crimea is liberated and restored to Ukrainian sovereignty and returned to its indigenous Crimean Tatar community.

For Moscow, Crimea is the most prized trophy of its invasion and the war against Ukraine, and is the territory Russia is likely to relinquish last if at all.