5.06.2024 – Translated from Ukrainian via Google and OFP

The systematic destruction of ships and boats and strikes with high-precision weapons on other enemy military installations on the territory of the Crimean Peninsula made the occupiers quite nervous. Nobody believes that the Ukrainian Defense Forces will allow the Russians to calmly “manage” the occupied territory.

Moreover, over the past couple of weeks, a new wave of “evacuation” of Russian military families from the Autonomous Republic of Crimea has been recorded – and this time from the southern coastal region.

Read what is happening in Crimea now in the OBOZ.UA material.

Bridge protection and leaky air defense

Special efforts of the Russian occupiers today are aimed at protecting the Crimean (Kerch) bridge. They placed old barges along it in the hope that the booms would stop Ukrainian naval drones; several military boats are on duty in the strait every day.

Plus, the Russian occupation forces deployed additional air defense systems to the area of ​​the city of Kerch. But the Russians already have big problems with it due to the recent destruction of their air defense systems, including the S-400 Triumph anti-aircraft missile system. Now, according to the Atesh partisan movement, the occupiers have begun to build protective screens on the roads in order to hide their air defense systems.

The Russians also became very nervous after the attacks on the Avangard and Conroe Trader ferries. They perceived this as an unambiguous signal and a sign of an impending new attack on the bridge, since ferries would remain the only option for transporting people and goods across the Kerch Strait after the destruction of the railway.

“There was a lot of conflicting information that the Crimean Bridge is supposedly no longer used by Russia to supply its group of troops, but this is not so. Cargo definitely continues to be transferred across it. The occupiers are simply trying to create a kind of smoke screen (in a figurative sense) to downplay the importance of the bridge, but you can’t fool our intelligence,” says OBOZ.UA’s interlocutor in the Ukrainian Defense Forces.

And our source in Kerch claims that two weeks ago the occupiers forbade their relatives to travel across the Crimean Bridge (to get to Russia and/or back to the peninsula). “They fear that at any moment the Ukrainians could launch a missile strike. Moreover, the panic has already reached the point that while traveling across the bridge by train, passengers are prohibited from going out into the carriage corridor,” he shared.

“Exile from Paradise”

Russians today are restless throughout the Crimean Peninsula, which they captured in 2014. During the 10 years of occupation, they never managed to destroy the partisan movement and convince all local residents that “Russia is here forever.” That is why the FSB has recently intensified the terror of the Crimeans, suspecting everyone of helping the Ukrainian Defense Forces.

“A whole institution of informers has developed here; the occupiers use various methods to force people to snitch on each other. The FSB agents are systematically building their network of agents, including trying to do this among the Crimean Tatars, whom they fear most. But for now, their main eyes, if I may say so to put it simply, these are Russians who moved to the peninsula and assimilated,” said our interlocutor in the Ukrainian special service.

And there really are a lot of citizens of the aggressor country here. Their dominance is especially felt in Sevastopol, which is considered the base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. But after successful thinning down to the flotilla level, many families of occupiers and simply “vagrants” have already left here.

“The strikes on the same landing ships really caused panic among the Russians. Some of the officers (who survived) quickly sent their wives and children to the mainland – to Russia,” says our source in Sevastopol.

Today, a wave of “expulsion from paradise” (Russians call Crimea paradise, where there is a healing climate, sea and a lot of fruit) has already swept along the Southern Coast (SC), which until recently was considered quite safe. After the successful defeat of the Russian air defense base on Mount Ai-Petri in May, everything changed. Now, the relatives of Russian officers who have settled in Yalta are already thinking about moving.

“Some occupiers – military and intelligence officers – previously brought their wives and children here, as well as their parents. The latter are often settled not in the city, but in nearby villages – it is much more comfortable to live in them, especially if it is a private house. But now they have begun to put them up for sale, and these are definitely not local residents, but Russians who have arrived in large numbers. True, real estate agencies say that “not at bargain prices,” they say, the Russians have invested in housing, in its renovation and want to sell it with a profit.” said an interlocutor of OBOZ.UA in Yalta.

Few people doubt that Ukraine will return Crimea—the only question is when.

https://war.obozrevatel.com/vrag-ne-perestaet-atakovat-v-genshtabe-nazvali-samyie-goryachie-napravleniya-fronta.htm