Ukrainian forces have used jet skis to creep into Russian-occupied Crimea and a Russian-occupied offshore oil rig at night, according to a commander involved in the operations.
During the raids on Crimea over the last month, they claimed to have killed two Russian colonels, a Russian intelligence officer and 30 Russian soldiers, as well as destroying expensive Russian air defence equipment and four high-speed boats.
“The Russian defence of Crimea is very, very weak,” said Borgese, the nom de guerre of one of the commanders of the operation – and one of the first Ukrainian military personnel to set foot on the peninsula since 2014.
The Russian military considers the Black Sea – which surrounds most of Crimea – to be a defensive deterrent, and that means that “important strategic facilities are located 200 to 300 metres away from the shore,” Borgese continued.
openDemocracy verified Borgese’s participation in the raid and the veracity of his account through videos and photos shared from the operation.
Borgese said the aim of these new maritime operations was, in part, to shock Russian forces and target high-ranking military personnel and equipment which would otherwise be unreachable.
The raids are a small, though daring, element of the Crimea operation that Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence implicitly announced in one of its cinematic-style psy-ops trailers on Twitter in July.
The weightier part of the three-month operation has consisted of maritime drone attacks on the Crimean bridge and Russian military vessels, and a direct hit on Russia’s naval headquarters (which experts assess was conducted using British Storm Shadow missiles), where Ukraine claims dozens of Russian officers were killed.
Since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the Kremlin has effectively created a large military base out of the peninsula. Crimea is close, but not too close, to the front lines with Ukrainian forces, which means Russia can use it to store and transport equipment and troops, house bases, conduct military training, blockade Ukraine’s ports and launch missiles into Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Crimea operation has so far borne fruit. The Wall Street Journal reported on 4 October that Russia had withdrawn most of its Crimean fleet to its Black Sea port at Novorossiysk.
Since the exodus of Russian ships, leading Western military analysts have reviewed Ukraine’s Crimea operation positively.
But one of their main observations, according to military expert Phillips O’Brien, is that Ukraine needs more equipment to achieve sustained and continuous pressure to succeed in Crimea, as it did with the US-supplied HIMARs in 2022 when it destroyed dozens of Russian ammunition depots. But morale is reportedly at its lowest point among Ukrainian soldiers and Western politicians are reluctant to be vocal about long-term support. Convincing the West of the need for more equipment will be an uphill battle. It will require an admission that this is a long war and planning for it as such.
“Everything is very difficult on land,” said Borgese. “There are minefields that must be de-mined. There are kilometres and kilometres that have to be overcome to get to where the enemy is, and the enemy is watching this territory meticulously.” He means both Russian military personnel and air defence equipment.
These special operations are not Ukraine’s first surprise forays into enemy territory
Footage shared with openDemocracy by Borgese appears to show his unit preparing a small boat loaded with jet skis. Borgese, the commander, is a member of the ultra-conservative Christian Bratstvo battalion. The latter is the military wing of Ukraine’s Bratstvo political party, a small unelected group with a perplexing history of alliances and of working with the Ukrainian security services.
Ukrainian military intelligence has said in public statements that Bratstvo and another battalion, Stuhna, have participated in the raids under its command. The reason for the amalgamation, according to Borgese, is that both have selected people who are prepared for “martyrdom”.
Ukraine’s military intelligence reported losses during the second raid into Crimea conducted on 4 October, but gave no indication of their scale. The head of Russian-occupied Crimea Sergey Aksyonov thanked the Russian border services on Telegram for apprehending one of the group and later a Russian military blogger claimed that Crimean authorities discovered a body in a wetsuit that was killed during a skirmish.
Borgese said Ukraine’s military maritime experts initially dismissed the idea of using jet skis, insisting that the small boats carrying the jet skis and fuel would be detected. But, he believes, these operations have disproved their belief that Russia knows and sees everything in the Black Sea.
The Ukrainian raid on a Russian-occupied off-shore oil facility in mid-September, said Borgese, was a practice run designed to show the operation was possible and see what could go wrong. Then came Crimea.
The benefit of using a jet ski, according to Borgese, is that it cannot be detected by Russian radar systems, which are designed for ships and do not set off sea mines – again designed for ships. The Ukrainian military had already seen that Russian coastguards and planes were unable to target the mined drones that they once used against the Crimean bridge. Another factor, he noted, was that good quality jet skis travelling at a low speed are relatively quiet.
Borgese also referred to a video in which Russian troops appeared to be trying unsuccessfully to hit a Ukrainian remotely-operated jet ski loaded with explosives using machine gun fire.
These special operations are not Ukraine’s first surprise forays into enemy territory. Bratstvo with Borgese, as well as other Ukrainian units, have also been involved in operations across the Dnipro river in the southern Kherson region, as well as into Russia’s Belgorod region.
The operations across the Dnipro into Russian-occupied territory were in some ways more dangerous than Crimea as Russian forces have positions all along the riverbank, Borgese said. Ukraine has since established a tiny foothold on the eastern, otherwise Russian-controlled bank of the Dnipro.
That remains shrouded in secrecy, however, as Ukraine’s military activities on Kherson’s riverbanks are a matter of strict military censorship, one Ukrainian brigadier general told openDemocracy on condition of anonymity.
Isolation
While Ukraine was preparing troops for a second round of the counter offensive, and awaiting western equipment, it is now no secret that Russia was preparing its defensive lines with mines and adapting its techniques for a long war. This means Ukraine, according to analysts, needs to be more creative if it is to succeed.
Ukraine’s forces have edged the Russian forces back at several points in the south, south-east and east this summer – a turn from Ukraine’s retreats around Soledar and Bakhmut in the east over the winter, but not the big break Ukraine hoped for. The line has moved a few kilometres in places and not at all elsewhere.
If Ukraine succeeds in thwarting Russia’s ability to use Crimea, it would leave Russia with only one supply route for its forces on the southern and south-western frontline – through mainland Russia. This would make it “much, much harder” for Russian forces, said O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at St Andrews University.
But the Crimea operation could take six months with Ukraine’s current weapons stockpiles (a mix of adapted homegrown Neptune missiles and British- and French-supplied Storm Shadow and Scalp missiles) and Ukraine will need to continuously replenish what it has.
“You isolate [Russia’s ability to use] Crimea by controlling traffic in and out of it,” said O’Brien, pointing to Russia’s navy and the Kerch bridge, which Russia uses to transport its supplies.
O’Brien believes Ukraine could isolate the peninsula “tomorrow” if it were given enough long-range weapons. But European stockpiles are low and the US dragged its feet all year, though eventually announcing it would provide an unknown quantity of ATACMS ballistic missiles – which have a range of 300 kilometres – to Ukraine last week.
The war is now about “which side can force their will on the other” and “constantly keep pressure that can eventually cause the other side to break”Estonian military intelligence chief Margo Grosberg
In summer 2022, Ukraine conducted a similar campaign behind enemy lines using US HIMARS missiles on Russian ammunition depots and bases, effectively pressuring Russian forces to retreat from the occupied western Kherson region and disrupting Russian supplies to the front lines.
Since then, Russia has relocated its depots and command and control points out of the 80-kilometre HIMARS range, said O’Brien. “The high-value targets [in range of HIMARS] aren’t in the same number that they were last July,” he said.
Russia also conducts regular attacks on Ukraine’s military behind the front lines, though Ukrainian military censorship makes it difficult to tell how effective these are.
Morale
Borgese bounced with confidence as he spoke about his battalion’s exploits in Crimea. But other Ukrainian fighters stationed in trenches along the long front line are less euphoric.
There is no widespread sentiment that Ukraine should give up, but the realisation that the difficulties and casualties could last well into 2024 is hard to stomach. Fighting for over 18 months is tough, one senior Ukrainian military officer admitted on condition of anonymity. And this week a former Ukrainian presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, who has been a poster boy of positivity during the war, said that Ukraine would need to mobilise, equip and train “half a million soldiers” to achieve its aim of reaching its 1991 borders.
The scale of the task means that the “psychological factor” in the Russia-Ukraine war cannot be dismissed.
While Ukraine’s information campaigns targeting Russian troops are well publicised, a Ukrainian military intelligence representative, Andriy Cherniak, told openDemocracy that Russia is more focused on lowering morale in society both in the West and Ukraine.
Inside Ukraine, Cherniak said, Russia frequently attempts to use tensions over being called up to fight and Ukrainian prisoners of war. Russian forces, he said, often call family members with their distressed captives in order to change a community’s view of the war and persuade them that Ukraine is not doing enough to return them.
“They primarily try to turn off [an individual’s] rational perception through negative emotions,” said Yevhen, a military intelligence officer who specialises in Russia’s information campaigns.
An example from last year shows just how important morale can be. When Russian forces retreated from the occupied Kharkiv region last September, it was actually the result of a domino effect of troops retreating – and then others fleeing due to poor communication and morale, according to a recent interview with the outgoing head of Estonian military intelligence.
The war is now about “which side can force their will on the other” and “constantly keep pressure that can eventually cause the other side to break”, he said.
