Ukraine Is Quietly Cutting Off Crimea

So Russia is really in a tough spot right now, and look, I'm trying to stay grounded and not exaggerate what's happening here, but we're in the midst of some serious change, and it's the Russians themselves that are sounding the alarm.On top of that, we just got news that Ukraine is now leveraging US satellite imagery for near real -time targeting.For Russia, things aren't getting better, they're getting worse.Now, starting out with an assessment here from Russian media Rybar, they say, quote, And this is what we've seen in recent days, where Russian government officials in Crimea have made clear to the people there that they do not have fuel available for sale.In fact, they're saying, don't line up at the station and don't try to hoard gas.It's not available.

It's only available for military and government services.That's a pretty significant issue that happened very quickly in Crimea.Now, I'm going to go to the map to show you the area we're talking about here.This is a deep state map.Zooming in, Crimea is already a difficult situation, right?It's a peninsula down here at the southern tip of Ukraine, taken over by Russia in 2014.

If you're trying to move any significant amount of equipment or materials to Crimea, there's, you know, the land route via Russia here.This is Highway 280 as they refer to it.A couple different names, but essentially it's a land route from Russia through Mariupol, through Melitopol, and then down into Crimea.Crimea, this is one of the land routes that's getting hit especially hard by Ukrainian drones right now.

There's also the land route across the Kerch Bridge, more on that here in a minute, and then you have the Sea of Azov right here in the middle.Now, you can fly things into Crimea, so I don't want to pretend like it's completely cut off, but when you're talking about moving bulk fuel, or armored vehicles, or a ton of ammunition, it's just not feasible to do that.over the long term in any size quantity through the air.You need land routes either on road or on rail or over sea.Ukraine is hitting both of those consistently right now, isolating the Crimean Peninsula in so many ways.So Rybar continued by saying, with the decline in ground cargo transportation volumes, the enemy has shifted strikes to the Sea of Azov waters.

Online sources have reported the destruction of five cargo vessels.This is a logistical progression.Having severely disrupted land communication, Ukrainian forces are moving to disrupt alternative supply routes.Again, The land route's getting shut down, at least restricted.Now they're going after the sea route.They say, quote, the next target will likely be the Crimean Bridge.

Haven't seen that in a little while, but zooming down here, the one connection to Crimea from mainland Russia in the south.And others bypass supply routes to the peninsula.

The enemy's goal is not only to cut off supplies to southern troop groupings, but to turn Crimea into a depressed region with chronic resource shortages.

Russia or Ukraine is implementing a blockade of sorts of Crimea right now.They're making it unlivable.We've seen this playing out now for a couple years as they've continually gone after Russian air defense assets and airfields in Crimea.Now they are.I mean, the term being used in Russian media is new blockade.

And we're seeing those effects very quickly in Crimea.Now, speaking to these strikes in the Sea of Azov, we just got some footage shared by the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces overnight, where they say, quote, They say a cargo ship was hit in the area of Berdansk, Zaporizhia.Two cargo ships in the area of Yalta, Donetsk.Two cargo ships in the area of Mariupol, Donetsk.Yeah, so five total there.They say cargo ships entering occupied ports play an important role in the logistical support of the Russian forces.

They are used to deliver ammunition, military equipment, fuel, and lubricants, and other supplies for the occupying army.In addition, the occupying authorities systematically use the ports of the temporarily occupied territories for the illegal export of Ukrainian grain and other resources.

They added that every ship that works for Russia is a viable target as this war continues.Now, you might have seen some news about how Azerbaijani citizens were killed in these strikes.

The BBC talked about that.They say Azerbaijan's foreign ministry confirmed that five of their citizens had been killed in these strikes on two of the vessels in the Sea of Azov overnight.

The foreign ministry did not specify, did not call out Ukraine as being the ones who carried out those strikes, and they noted that these ships did not belong to Azerbaijan.Now, this is tricky territory for Ukraine, no doubt.If there's any citizen from another country that is killed in these attacks, it does become a bit of an issue.In this case, it looks an awful lot like these were Azerbaijani citizens working for Russia, transporting Russian military equipment and or Ukrainian grain away from these ports.

Now, Russian nationalist Igor Gorkin, ever the pessimist we always turn to, said, quote, it should be noted that our side was completely unprepared for the new capabilities of the Ukrainian military, neither technically, nor informationally, nor organizationally.He's talking about the Ukrainian mid and deep strike campaign that is playing out day in and day out.He said, quote, if any measures to counteract the swarm of medium range UAVs with AI were being prepared, they're not visible to an outside observer and are not known at all.

And the enemy's actions, unfortunately, are successful, and the success is quite obvious.If the new blockade, there's the term, talking about Crimea, drags on for weeks, and measures to counteract it are not found and implemented, the consequences will be dire.

negative and tragic and the strategic situation for our troops will significantly worsen and it is absolutely inevitable.Again, to talk about the major concern here, what Ukraine has been doing is isolating the front.They're making it harder and harder for Russia to keep their forward forces resupplied.So we've got this one main route moving into the southern occupied territories that is becoming undriveable.There's already been reports, unverified, so take this with a grain of salt, that some drivers have said we're not doing that.Because so many vehicles are getting blown up, they're saying, we're just not going to drive that route.

If you start to see that, you're going to start to see a significant reduction in Russia's ability to maintain some of their forces, especially over here in the Zaporizhia direction, where the only supplies for these guys are coming through mainland Russia and coming through Crimea.

If they're not able to keep them resupplied, this is the type of thing that over the long term, that formation becomes unable to maintain the defense.You can't have forces forward and not provide them regularly with fuel, food, ammunition, and reinforcements.Ukraine is shutting that off, making it harder and harder for these Russian formations to stay in the fight.

Now, shifting back to Rybar, they actually shared some pretty interesting graphics that I'll put up on the screen here, where they talk about the enemy's capabilities in drone employment.over the past six months have grown not only through the number of drones, but also through the quality and speed of target designation.That is getting to the target acquisition through US satellite imagery.And to give you an idea of the scope of this problem that Russia is facing, Rybar, so a Russian source, says that Russia intercepted 54 ,821 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory in the last 12 months.That is insane.We are in the fifth year of this war and are you kidding me?

54 ,000 Ukrainian drones interceptedRussian territory.That was unthinkable a year or two ago.Rybar added that the monthly launches coming from Ukraine are approaching 10 ,000.

So they are on track to have more than 100 ,000 drones launched into Russian territory this year.And they're becoming more accurate with better targeting data.

And this is due, at least in part, to their use of new satellite imagery coming from the United States, but not the United States government.That's important.The Wall Street Journal earlier today put out an article saying, quote, over the past six months, During small team missions to test the technology, images from commercial satellites operated by Colorado -based Vantor have improved the speed and precision of Ukraine's drone attacks.The rapid delivery to soldiers of geospatial intelligence has shortened by as much as 90 % the time it takes to locate and strike Russian assets, according to the technology providers and people involved in the missions.Augmenting the images is software that lets users identify and investigate targets in detail.The satellite intelligence has allowed them to do within hours what used to require weeks, either because of a lag in getting intelligence out to the front or the relative slowness of launching a drone and waiting for it to survey large areas, often made slower by fog or snow.

Now, a couple key components there.First off, this is a pretty resilient setup.This is not the U .S.government sharing official U .S.

satellite imagery with the Ukrainian government.It's a private company in the United States entering into a commercial agreement with a Ukrainian unit, maybe a core level relationship, maybe with the Ukrainian military, maybe with the Ukrainian government.But what that means is when the United States inevitably changes our tune towards Ukraine, say Secretary Hegseth decides, no more, turn those ships back, turn those planes back, whatever it might be like you did a couple times last year, it won't have an impact on this intelligence.gathering.So in this sense, Ukraine is not reliant upon the United States, they're reliant on a private entity selling their services, all right?On top of that, there's a lot of value in using satellite imagery, especially very, very recent.

We're talking about something like 18 passes a day.

So it's not real time, but every, you know, what is that, every 45 minutes, almost once every hour, you've got a new look inside of Russia, was the example they gave here.For some of the targets near the front line, whatever, right?Ukraine has so many drones, so many recon drones, not really going to be all that beneficial.

But when you're talking about targets in Crimea, or the Kerch Bridge, or deep inside of Russian territory, remember, just the other day, Ukraine carried out strikes 1 ,000 kilometers inside of Russian territory.Ukraine is not, or not often, flying reconnaissance drones to see exactly what that damage looked like.And now they don't have to, even if that was a consideration.They can just wait 45 minutes for the next pass of these satellites through that commercial relationship and dial in their targeting.Do they need to strike again?Was the target destroyed?

How many drones got through?Do they need to adjust and strike a little further north, a little further east?On top of this, you have to think of the number of times that Russia is moving equipment around.

You know, they're moving drones into launch position.

Maybe Ukraine can monitor that and go after some of these launch sites that are harder to detect deep inside of Russian territory.This is a big benefit to Ukraine and allows us to see this near real -time battle damage assessment, like just the other day.You remember the strike on the Russian Black or Baltic Sea Fleet Corvette Boiki?And we just got the drone footage saying, looks like something got hit.And Russian sources said, yeah, there were definitely a couple of hits.

We have satellite imagery now as well.I mean, the Russians, for their part, actually leaked footage from on the ground showing that the thing is burning, but even if we didn't have that and they maintained OPSEC, we have satellite imagery showing, yeah, that thing is pretty significantly destroyed.

That directly affects Ukraine's targeting for the next go -round.They don't have to go after this one again, or maybe they do and completely put it out of commission, but that intelligence is incredibly, incredibly valuable.Now, the challenge that Russia is facing right now is there's no quick fix, no quick solution to stopping these Ukrainian drones that now are striking further inside of Russian territory with more detailed intelligence, better targeting data.So what I would expect to see here in the near future is a pretty significant ramping up of Ukrainian strikes inside of Russian territory, which brings us right back to the question, what does Russia do now when their options are limited?

What we have seen historically is that generally means that Russia increases their strikes on civilian infrastructure, on city centers throughout Ukraine.So that is what I would expect to see, unfortunately, here in the coming weeks.Ukraine ramps up deep strikes against military infrastructure inside of Russia.Russia's response, because they're Relatively limited again is Launching more missiles and drones probably larger barrages at places like Kiev, Lviv, Dnipro, Zaporizhia, Odessa, and elsewhere.Now I wanted to give you guys a quick update on some fundraiser.We've been rocking it this year 2026 off to a heck of a start.

Car for Ukraine, we've got this year long campaign going with these guys.This is kind of the soft launch of our summer campaign.Alright, so we're trying to raise 430 ,000 euros for the 2nd Battalion 104th Territorial Defense Brigade.We've also got a couple other units we're working with as well.So soft launch, bear with me, the website's not done yet, right?This thing isn't supposed to go live until next week.

But Technically, it's up and operational right now.It just doesn't look as good as it's going to.But if you want to get ahead of the curve, we got a new patch rolled out for this campaign.And this one, we're actually supporting a new unit as well.So the 1st Battalion Black Swans of the 225th Separate Assault Regiment, they reached out in recent weeks, talked about the number of vehicles that they're going through as they are fighting actively in the Zapposdirection, specifically Hulipoli.

In fact, we just wrapped up an interview yesterday with the deputy battalion commander of that organization talking about how they're conducting offensive operations day in and day out.So can't wait to share that one with you guys working on the editing now.That's a part of this current campaign, but We're rocking so often moving really fast with a car for Ukraine 2026 well on our way for those interested in able the link to contribute will be in the pin comment and the description below.That's all we got for now.Thanks for watching, and I'll see y 'all next time.