On 3 May 2023, a fire erupted at a Russian fuel depot in Volna, situated on the Russian mainland side of the Kerch Strait, close to the Crimean bridge.
Defence Intelligence sources indicate that the blaze was initiated by a suspected drone strike, stating, “On 3 May 2023 a fire broke out at a Russian fuel depot in Volna on the Russian mainland side of the Kerch Strait, close to the Crimean bridge. It was initiated by a suspected drone strike.”
This incident is the latest in a series of events since the beginning of the year, where Russian fuel storage sites have been damaged. Fuel depots in occupied Ukraine and the Russia-Ukraine border regions are particularly vulnerable to attack.
As the Defence Intelligence update highlighted, “This follows a pattern of Russian fuel storage sites being damaged since the start of the year, with fuel depots in occupied Ukraine and the Russia-Ukraine border regions remaining particularly vulnerable to attack.”
The continued disruption to the fuel storage and distribution network will likely necessitate alterations to Russia’s military refuelling operations in order to mitigate targeting.
The Defence Intelligence report emphasises, “The disruption to the fuel storage and distribution network will likely force adjustments to Russia’s military refuelling operations to mitigate targeting.”
In response to these threats, Russian authorities may consider implementing additional protective measures at fuel storage sites, as has been observed in Tuaspe, Russia. Alternatively, they may rely on infrastructure in less threatened regions to maintain fuel supply and distribution.
The Defence Intelligence update notes, “Russian adjustments could include deploying additional protection measures at fuel storage sites, as seen in Tuaspe in Russia, or relying on infrastructure in less threatened regions.”
Excellent
Ukraine is getting rather adept at building and exploiting drones. It seems that this technology is developing at a very impressive rate on both sides. Ukrainian experience is clearly going to have powerful influence on Western developments that’s for certain.
Believe the Ukrainians will be the premier instructors for drone operations and tactics by the completion of this dust-up.
These strikes against key logistics centres and infrastructure using cheap drones is something that Ukraine is really showing the way on. Not only is Ukraine running an effective defensive peer war, but it’s ability to use what is essentially asymmetric warfare against Russian logistics is pretty interesting…maybe being the victims of Russian asymmetric warfare for the last 8 years has sharpened the Ukrainian armed forces ability to both work as a military but also out of the box using a modern drone and mobile phone armed partisan type approach.
👍👍
This past week there has been a spate of Ukrainian strikes on Russian miltary assets inside and outside the Ukraine. The above attack targeted (as mentioned) a fuel dump in the crimea, one very large fuel tank was struck, this caught fire and spread to the rest. Here is a wee video of the resulting fire. That was on the 29th of April, on the 3rd of May another fuel dump was struck, this time in Russia proper on the otherside of the Taman Peninsula where the Crimea bridge starts. (Russians are claiming it was carried out by saboteurs and they have been arrested
The other day the Ukrainians struck inside Sevastopol harbour (caught on video) to whicht he Russians say caused no damage, but the video I saw of the blast was clearly inside the harbour and inside the wire. But hey, I’ll give Moscow the benefit of the doubt
On the second of May Russians having a piss up inside the Laguna cafe in Tokmak had the luxury of an uninvited guest a GMLRS missile killing 5 and injuring 15 (or so Moscow claims). 8 rounds in total, with other targets been railway lines
Tokmak is around 20 miles from the front line and is around 30 miles north of Melitopol’. And as of today Moscow has started pulling people out of Tokmak Polohy, Molochansk, Oleksiivka, Melitopol, and Enerhoda, so I take it the Russians feel that the Ukrkainians are on the cusp of their spring offensive.
Tonight the Ukraine has struck Donbas (still waiting out to see what they hit) All of this has put pressure on Moscow, which could explain why tonight they have blitzed Bahkmut with incendary weapons (I’ll link in a video in a follow up) in which to finish off that pain in the arse for them, freeing up the troops to be used elsewhere.
The video of Bahkmut i mentioned. The Russians did similar inside Syria, For some strange reason the do-gooders who openily bump their gums at the media (looks at the G and BBC) about how the US,Israel and Uk have used smoke shells containing WP, remain ever so silent when Moscow basically cooks a target area. Funny that eh.
This follows the use by Moscow of the TOS-1A Thermobaric MRLS on Bahkmut yesterday
The Russian forces will get some strong stuff back in their faces soon. Strength to Ukraine 🇺🇦!
Ukraine doesn’t need to tell everyone what and where there doing. Hope they can strike hard, fast and smart from all sides including from behind! Strength to Ukraine 🇺🇦!
Wonderful pic and way to go Ukraine. Meanwhile Putins thugs target women and children in residential areas. There are of course no entirely Black vs White as opposed to Grey shades in any war but it is really hard to find any redeeming features on the Russian side.
Oh dear, how sad, never mind!
Excellent news, and like many, I hope this is the orchestrated lead-up to more actions from Ukraine as the ground dries up.
On a separate note, I have to question why this article seems like its been padded out to double its length with redundant text. Every alternate paragraph is a near duplicate of the one that follows it – by having a verbatim quote preceded by a paragraph that is almost identical to the quote.
The below example shows how two paragraphs differ by just 3 words:
Why not just quote excerpts from the Defence Intelligence report, or have your words and provide a link/attribution to the report.
Talking of drone attacks, I find the one on Putins residence very interesting….if you look the thing explode on one side of the dome, but the fire damage is on the other side near the stairs…which had two people walking up it at exactly that time….it all seems a bit like it has the potential to be a false flag to me.
This is one of the problems, Putin is know for false flag operations ( a lot of the terror incidents leading up to the 2nd Chechen war are thought to have been false flags). So we are not going to know what are Ukrainian operations and what are Putins showing Russia is being attacked…but you can pretty well summarise that major logistics infrastructure hits are Ukraine…and more terror type events like car bombs are possibly false flag ( although many e not).
Agreed, that seems to be quite a common opinion. Especially given the token nature of damage.
UKDJ also has an opinion piece about the same: Drone ‘attack’ on Kremlin likely a Russian false flag (ukdefencejournal.org.uk)
Lack of discipline on smoking materials is a frequent example of ruzzian incompetence. Clearly better discipline is required preferably with Wagner Group innovation, the sledgehammer….
There seem to be a number of towns called Volna, but I could not find one near the Kerch straits bridge.