Russian spy drones target Ukrainian HIMARS and prevent attacks on Crimea

Kyiv has reportedly reduced the number of its missile attacks on Crimea because Moscow can use Russian drones to scout Ukrainian artillery, such as the US-supplied HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System).

Since Vladimir Putin’s invasion, Ukraine has attacked numerous Russian military targets on the peninsula, which it has occupied since 2014. Most recently, headline-grabbing attacks have been carried out using British Storm Shadow missiles and HIMARS systems.

But the pro-Ukrainian news portal Politika Strani (Politics of the Country) reported that the number of attacks by Kiev on Crimea had decreased in recent weeks due to the effectiveness of Russian unmanned reconnaissance aircraft.

“There is a problem that jeopardizes the deployment of HIMARS in Crimea – the recent activation of Russian reconnaissance drones,” Politika Strani said in a post on her Telegram channel next to a map of the Crimean region.

On July 8, the Russian military said it had disabled three HIMARS missile launchers in the Kherson region. Drone footage shows the alleged attack, but it has not been confirmed by Kyiv.

According to Politika Strani, Ukraine could use ATACMS missiles against the Crimean city of Sevastopol – a center of the Black Sea Fleet – and would need HIMARS in the Mykolaiv (Nikolaev) area, about 270 kilometers away. But Russian reconnaissance drones were able to reach that area as well as neighboring Odessa.

Russian drones are “extremely active tens of kilometers from the front line,” the post said, posing a “high risk” to HIMARS systems.

“This does not mean that the Ukrainian armed forces will give up their attacks on Crimea,” but Russia’s use of drones “forces the Ukrainian armed forces to be more cautious when using HIMARS near the front line.”

Newsweek has asked the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense for a comment.

The broadcaster reported that the last Ukrainian attack on July 5 triggered a major alarm on the peninsula. In the previous month, however, Kyiv’s attacks had been far more frequent.

On June 23, according to Russian media reports, fragments of an ATACMS missile delivered from the USA fell over a beach in Sevastopol. They were destroyed by a Russian air defense system. Four people were killed and 151 others were injured.

Meanwhile, Ukraine continues to use drone attacks on oil facilities on Russian territory. Numerous attacks, often not immediately claimed by Kyiv, are aimed at stifling Moscow’s war machine.

Citing an intelligence source, the Kyiv Independent reported that Ukraine’s State Security Service was behind an attack on an oil depot in Tsimlyansky district of Rostov Oblast on Friday evening. It said SBU drones caused the explosion at the site where gasoline and diesel were stored.