Hardened

The Ukrainian SBU launched a drone strike on Russia’s Saki Air Base in Crimea on Friday. The attack, the latest in a string of strikes against Russian aviation and logistic assets on the peninsula, is part of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s latest campaign to inflict so much pain on Russia that Vladimir Putin moves to end the war.

SBU claimed to have destroyed several Russian tactical combat jets today as well as on Wednesday. Saki is home to the Russian Navy’s 43rd Independent Naval Attack Aviation Regiment, which flies mostly Su-30SM Flankers. It has been a frequent target of Ukrainian strikes and was hit by a devastating attack in the early days of the war.

“At the ‘Saki’ airfield, seven hangars storing aviation equipment were hit, in which Su-30SM, Su-30, and Su-24 fighter jets and frontline bombers were located,” SBU added. “According to preliminary information, at least seven aircraft were destroyed or damaged.”

SBU told us it had no visual evidence from either attack to back their claim, but we reached out to Vantor to see if they had any satellite imagery of the base. Vantor provided us a picture that showed damage to four hardened aircraft shelters that was taken this morning. Some of shelters have clear damage to their structures, others literally have their doors blown off and laying on the taxiway in front of them. From the overhead angle of the image, it is impossible to determine if aircraft were in those shelters at the time, and if they were, what, if any damage, was inflicted. In addition, we can’t tell when this happened from just one picture, although imagery we reviewed from Planet Labs dating to June 27th doesn’t appear to show the same damage to the shelters.

It is very possible that any aircraft in those shelters could have been damaged by fire, as the SBU claimed, or by shrapnel, but we just don’t know. Regardless, the shelters remain generally intact. We have written frequently about Russia’s efforts to protect its aircraft this way, including on Crimea.

Regardless, these attacks come after months of Ukrainian strikes on bridges connecting the peninsula with the mainland and on it’s fuel infrastructure. The situation has gotten so bad on Crimea that the officials there have tried to initiate gasoline rationing, making life miserable at the height of the traditional summer vacation season there.

Amid the ongoing Ukrainian pressure campaign, a Russian military officer said he recently took part in an exercise to see what it would take to fend off Ukrainian attacks on Crimea.

“I participated in the operational command-staff military game ‘Crimean Alert,’” Russian reserve colonel and military expert Viktor Murakhovsky claimed on Telegram. “The game was dedicated to the landing of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Crimea and our measures to repel it. The staffs were organized according to the scenario from officers (in reserve and retired) of our armed forces.”

“The ‘Blue’ side acted unconventionally, widely using the latest means of detection and destruction,” he added. “The ‘Red’ side was forced to act ‘on the defensive.’ Overall, the exercises went smoothly and at a high level thanks to the organizers.”

Clearly, Ukraine does not possess much of a Navy, let alone landing craft to carry out a Normandy-style invasion. However, that is not the scenario played out in this wargame, according to an analysis by the award-winning The Insider news outlet.

“The scenario clearly simulates an amphibious or maritime operation: numerous blue arrows and routes are drawn across the Black Sea, extending from the direction of Odesa and the northwestern Black Sea toward Crimea,” the publication noted. “Red defensive positions are marked on the map within Crimea, particularly around Sevastopol, in northern Crimea, and in the eastern part of the peninsula.”

The map “shows the Kerch and Kerch Strait area on the right—also densely marked with red icons—indicating that the game scenario accounted for the eastern flank in addition to western Crimea and Sevastopol,” The Insider proffered. “Judging by Murakhovsky’s post, the scenario likely envisioned not a classic World War II-style amphibious landing—with hundreds of ships approaching the shore—but rather a modern operation involving the mass use of drones, long-range precision-guided weapons, reconnaissance systems, and possibly small, high-speed boats.”

As we have frequently reported, Ukraine has for years been using its air and sea drones to attack Russian air defenses and radars inland, its seaports and largely driven the Black Sea Fleet out of Crimea through the use of its innovative sea drone campaign.

Ukraine, as we reported in the past, has already carried out several incursions on the peninsula. In October 2023, the Ukrainian Defense Intelligence Directorate (GUR) sent a small raiding party into a point north of Tarkhankut Bay. It was carried out by troops traversing the Black Sea on Sea-Doo GTX 300 personal watercraft. They were loaded down by grenade launchers, machine guns, man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) and other equipment needed to assault Russian positions. You can read more about that raid in our interview with the unit commander here.

Those attacks did not lead to a sustained presence, but they were not intended to. They were meant as a morale-boosting reminder to Moscow that Crimea would never be completely out of reach.

Whether Ukraine can marshal enough of its asymmetric assets and troops to really carry out any sort of a wide-scale amphibious landing on Crimea remains questionable bordering on impossible. One thing, however, is not. Ukraine is inflicting significant amounts of pain on Russian forces and assets on the peninsula.

UPDATE: 4:49 PM EDT –

Vantor provided us with additional satellite images of Saki. A very cursory analysis shows that six out of seven hardened aircraft shelters were damaged, with doors blown off of four of them.

There appears to be possible damage to two other shelters seen in a wider shot of Saki.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

Tehran, Iran – Iran’s authorities and state media project that they are less interested than before the war in negotiations with the United States if they go beyond their accepted terms, as mediated talks failed to materialise in Pakistan.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met senior Pakistani officials in Islamabad on Saturday and left for Oman, to be later bound for Russia. The top diplomat, who was not joined by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf like in a previous round of negotiations earlier this month, said he was “yet to see if the US is truly serious about diplomacy”.

Envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had been expected in Pakistan after the White House said Iran asked for a second round of direct negotiations, but US President Donald Trump cancelled the trip and said, “we have all the cards, they have none” while reiterating his claim about “infighting and confusion” among Iran’s leadership.

“If they want to talk, all they have to do is call!!!” Trump wrote in an online post, continuing to put the onus on Iran’s leadership.

Amid a state-imposed near-total internet shutdown in Iran, nearing two months, officials and the supporters of the Islamic Republic emphasise that they are united in opposing any concessions to Trump.

The US president said earlier this week he was in “no rush” to reach an agreement with Iranian leadership, whom he claimed, without evidence, were “fighting like cats and dogs” among themselves.

Since Trump highlighted the perceived fractures, military, security, judiciary and government authorities in Iran have been releasing synchronised messages with near-identical wording to proclaim absolute unity.

The messages, circulated through state media and even using similar graphics and fonts but with different colours, claim that everyone in the country is “revolutionary” and exercises “complete obedience” to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei.

The authorities also claim that more than 30 million people – a third of Iran’s total population – have registered in a state-run campaign to express readiness to “sacrifice” their lives if necessary, but they have not provided any documentation to prove this.

The Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said on Saturday afternoon that armed forces would retaliate against the US if it continues its “blockade, banditry and piracy” in Iran’s southern waters.

“We are prepared and determined to monitor the behaviour and movement of the enemies in the region and maintain management and control of the strategic Strait of Hormuz, and to inflict more severe damages on the American-Zionist enemies in case of another aggression,” read its statement.

The IRGC on Saturday took a state television presenter to broadcast near two vessels seized days earlier in the strait to report that Iran exercised “total control” over the waterway.

Iranian authorities continue to call on their supporters, including paramilitary forces, to take to the streets every night in order to maintain control.

In a rally in downtown Tehran on Friday night, Meysam Motiei, a prominent state-backed religious singer with links to the supreme leader’s office, told the crowds that anyone stuck in factional infighting during times of war “has not grown up yet”.

“If anyone from any group or faction, especially in the name of being a revolutionary, tries to disturb the unity of the people, they will get a slap in the face by the people,” he asserted.

But in ultraconservative Mashhad in northeast Iran, where a shrine considered holy for Shia Muslims is located along with powerful religious and economic foundations, some were still preaching aggressively against the possibility of former reformist and moderate leaders retaking power.

“They have instructed us to keep unity with incumbent officials, not these two people,” a speaker told a gathering crowd on Friday night in a clip shared by state-linked media, in reference to former President Hassan Rouhani and his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif.

“We are not afraid of B-2s and B-52s; we are afraid of dishonourables who have no concern for the homeland. Wherever Trump makes a mess, Zarif comes and blabbers away,” he said, about the diplomat who led nuclear talks that led to a now-expired landmark accord with world powers in 2015.

Iran’s judiciary continues to execute dissidents, and on Saturday announced the hanging of Erfan Kiani, who was arrested during the nationwide protests in January when thousands were killed.

The judiciary described him as “Mossad’s hired knife-wielder” and said he was accused of destroying property, arson and more in downtown Tehran.

No nuclear talks?

Iranian state media reports indicate that the US naval blockade of Iran’s ports is undermining the ceasefire extended by Trump and allowing the more hardline voices in Tehran to come out on top.

The Tasnim and Fars news agencies, affiliated with the IRGC, argued against allowing any nuclear negotiations to take place with the US, even though Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started the war with the predominant goal of preventing a nuclear-armed Iran. Tehran has consistently stressed that its nuclear programme is peaceful, although some Iranian leaders have called for the development of a bomb.

“The negotiations with the US are strictly to end the war, and Iran does not consider the nuclear issue to be part of the talks,” Tasnim said, claiming that time was not on Washington’s side due to the tumult in global markets resulting from the war.

Khamenei has not directly commented on more negotiations, but Ali Khezrian, another representative of Tehran in the hardline-dominated parliament, told state media on Thursday that Khamenei was “opposed to any extension of negotiations” under threats from the US and Israel.

Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz earlier this week adopted Trump’s apocalyptic messaging, and said armed forces are awaiting a greenlight from the US to “return Iran to the age of darkness and stone by blowing up central energy and electricity facilities and crushing national economic infrastructure”.

There are currently three US aircraft carriers and their supporting vessels in the Middle East region, according to the US military, which marks the first time this has happened since the buildup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

But Mahmoud Nabavian, a senior black-turban cleric and hardline member of parliament who was a part of the large Iranian delegation in the first round of talks, said it was a “strategic mistake” to even include the nuclear issue.

He told state media that this allowed the US to raise demands like a 20-year suspension of enrichment, and shipping Iran’s buried high-enriched uranium abroad.

“From now on, entering any negotiations with the US is pure damage and has no interest for the Iranian nation,” he said earlier this week, adding that oil sales were providing the government with a “full hand”.

Mohammad Saeedi, the Friday prayer imam of ultraconservative Qom, located south of Tehran, said in reference to the US that it would be “meaningless and unfair to sit down behind the negotiating table with a symbol of corruption”.

Civilian infrastructure in danger

The government of relatively moderate President Masoud Pezeshkian has signalled concern about the potential impacts of systematic targeting of more civilian infrastructure, especially power plants, in case the war continues.

“We have a simple request from the people: to reduce their consumption of power and energy. For now, we have no need for these dear people to sacrifice their lives, but we need to control consumption,” the president said on Saturday. “They have hit our infrastructure and blockaded us, so the people become dissatisfied.”

Mohammad Allahdad, the head of Tavanir, the government-owned mother company for development and operation of Iran’s power grid, told state television that it would pay a reward to citizens who would report any theft and illegal use of electricity.

First Vice President Mohammadreza Aref said, “We will build Iran back more glorious” through unity after previous infrastructure attacks that hit oil and gas facilities, steel producers, petrochemical firms, aluminium factories, energy facilities, as well as airports, naval ports, bridges and railway networks.

The government reopened Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport for limited foreign-bound flights on Saturday, including those taking people to the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, despite the potential of war resuming.