“Guerrilla forces loyal to Kyiv in occupied areas of southeastern Ukraine are attacking Kremlin-installed officials, blowing up bridges and trains and helping the Ukrainian military by identifying key targets in an effort to challenge Russia’s grip on the region.
The resistance could erode Kremlin control and threaten Russia’s plans to hold referendums aimed at annexing some areas of the country.
“Our goal is to make life unbearable for the Russian occupiers and use any means to derail their plans,” said Andriy, a 32-year-old coordinator of the guerrilla movement who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of not being fully identified.
Kherson, an occupied city of 500,000 people seized by Russian troops early in the war, has been openly discussed by Ukraine military leaders as a primary counteroffensive target. Guerrillas have repeatedly tried to kill Vladimir Saldo, the head of the Kherson region’s Russia-backed temporary administration. His assistant, Pavel Slobodchikov, was shot and killed in his vehicle, and another official, Dmytry Savluchenko, was killed by a car bomb.
“The Russians were expecting that they would be met with flowers, but they faced the fact that most people consider themselves Ukrainians and are ready to offer resistance,” said Oleksii Aleksandrov, a businessman in the occupied southern port of Mariupol.”
Comment: DOL pl
Ukraine live updates: 1 dead, 5 hurt as explosions rock Russian base (usatoday.com)
9 deaths reported as of an hour ago. Most Russian outlets still going with “ammunition explosions,” though Margaret Simonyan said “not deliveries, more likely sabotage or even mere bungling.” (Paraphrase). At least one death was reported as being a child.
Meanwhile Joe Biden can’t or won’t do anything about the largest nuclear plant in Europe being shelled by his team. No, I don’t think that’s why he sent the Five-Oh into Trumplesteinovitches secret lair. Did Al Capone have a house that luxurious?
There were two massive blasts at two separate ASPs on the Saki Airbase in Crimea. This airbase is over 200 km from the front lines in Kherson. That’s not the only major blast today. Another ASP located between Novooleksіivka and Oleksіivka in the Kherson Oblast near the Sea of Azov coast also exploded. That ASP was 150 km from the front lines. These strikes could be Ukrainian SOF and partisans. It’s certainly too far for HIMARS with the missiles we know they have.
The other possibility could be that we’ve slipped the Ukrainians some ATACMS block 1A missiles along with those HARM anti-radiation missiles. That would make a potent punch against targets protected by S-300/s-400 batteries. Whatever the cause, the Russians are clearly worried. Videos show the Crimean beaches emptying out with the twin mushroom clouds and secondary explosions at the airfield in the background. There’s another video with commentary showing a Russian traffic jam at the Kerch bridge. Russians are leaving Crimea.
There’s another possibility some are proposing.
“The Grom (Thunder) is a new Ukrainian short-range ballistic missile, that is currently being developed. Sometimes it is referred as the Grom-2. The missile project is dated back to 2003, however at that time there was no funding to begin development. In 2014 after the Russian military actions in Ukraine it was announced that the missile will be developed and deployed. So far only a prototype of this system exists. Development should be completed within the next few years. The Grom is equivalent to the Russian Iskander short-range ballistic missile. “
I think it’s a longshot but the Ru papers prominently offer up the option “strike from Odessa?” along with “sabotage” and “fire safety negligence” in coverage’s promptings and leadins. So in addition to your insights as a retired special forces officer I’m offering one from a retired paranoiac which wonders if de ebil rooskies aren’t preparing their audiences for a messa with Odessa. I doubt it but it could turn out sorta that way.
F&L,
I won’t be at all surprised if Russia picks up its missile strikes of Ukrainian cities in response to these latests strikes. It’s what they did after their ammo dumps started blowing up from HIMARS strikes.
In support of the SOF/partisan hypothesis, We planned such strikes on similar large airfield and ASP targets. Each strike involved weeks of planning to develop detailed target packages. We were expected to be able to conduct numerous strikes like this on WTO targets in Poland and, with a little luck and skill, live to tell about it.
These coordinated strikes in Kherson and Crimea could certainly have been carried out by Ukrainian SOF with partisan support.
Interesting picture to go with the article. Why not a picture of Al Qaeda or the Vietcong? Or Ukrainian ‘rebels’, fighting their countrymen after the 2014 coup which placed NATO-stooges on the throne in Kiev?
From my end I’m trying to stay away from cheering for one violent group, or the other, limiting myself to taking a hard look at whether or not they may be successful with the tactics used. Terrorism, killing unarmed, unprotected civilians in ambushes, and by blowing up their cars with car bombs, like these Ukrainian ‘nationalists’, NATO-trained operatives, are doing right now, is likely to result in more sympathy for the killed ‘brave’ civil servants, and rejection of the ‘cowards’ terrorizing the country. Unless this civil servant is already hated by the vast majority of the people because of his, or her role in rounding up the Jews for extermination, or something similar. These people listed, the mayor of Kherson and two aides, do not qualify.
They do not qualify, because they never shied from making it known that they objected to ‘Kiev’ since the 2014 coup, and Saldo was elected Mayor before the coup, and reelected twice. Controversy fed by western ‘interests’ surrounding his person notwithstanding. He was certainly not a ‘nobody’ dropped on the hapless population to rule them on orders of Putin. And if you take into account that the bulk of the people who hated people like him already left when the DPR/Russians took control of the Kherson area, it is safe to say this guy has plenty of popular support. One of the officials killed was running the council for ‘Family, Youth and Sports’. Explain to me how bombing his car is going to make the people understand that liberation of Kherson is just around the corner?
Terrorizing the people to create chaos is another beast altogether. It is not about winning the hearts and minds of the people, not about resisting, not about liberating, but about ‘scorched earth’. Making sure the opposing force will suffer for its attempts to take a piece of land away from the ‘owners’. Never mind the people. Which risks backfiring spectacularly.
Last week the Russian ‘opposite number’ of ‘Amazon’ lost a huge warehouse in a blaze, most likely because of sabotage. Targeting the civilian population, willfully making their lives miserable, is a questionable tactic, apart from the ethics and morals involved. It was used by ‘Gladio’ in Italy and other European countries. With Gladio being a NATO organization. The general idea was, that some well placed false flag operations, like blowing up a train station, and killing a politician who was trying to put together a government based on election results, and then blame the ‘Left’, would go a long way to make people beg for a right-wing ‘Strong man’ ruler to take over. Was it successful? Certainly not on the longer term. And what if you openly admit ‘right wing’, ultra nationalist groups are behind it, backed by the most formidable military organization in the world, and ‘Davos’, ‘London City’, ‘Wallstreet’ interests and their military-financial complex?
What never fails to amaze me, is that these ‘nationalist’, or religious fanatics employed in such a way are gratefully embracing a chance to smash everything of value within the country they consider ‘theirs’. Unable to comprehend that the ‘Overlords’ handling them want to enslave them in their ‘Empire of Chaos’. Which is why I’m grateful for this article, which illustrates this perfectly. From the header, to the description of what these ‘operatives’ are after. But let me assure you that the guys in the picture had a far different perspective when they joined the Dutch resistance.
Since this is not a neat war in your view, and the photo above was from a clear cut good v evil war, and a side is hard to cheer for in this war now…why not cheer for one side to lose definitively? By one side to lose, I mean the Russian side.
What you are doing is called ‘framing’, and attacking the ‘straw man’ you created.
Allow me to educate you about the resistance in my Dutch country during the second WW. Basically there were two groups which stood out as being the source of resistance fighters. The so called ‘Bible Belt’ people, which were devout ‘Lutheran’ Christians and Royalists, and the other, at least equally strong group were the communists. While no more than 1% of all the Dutch people participated in the resistance against the German occupation twenty percent of all the communists actively fought the Germans.
After the war, these communist resistance fighters were not given the recognition they deserved, since the Cold War descended over Holland. Christian individuals who participated were given plenty of recognition, but could not be presented as a group doing the right thing, since plenty of Christians were seen cooperating with the Germans.
Your simple proposition of cheering for anyone in Ukraine who will make the Russians suffer reveals that you are not willing to recognize the fact that more than a few Ukrainians never signed on the dotted line after NATO removed the elected government they supported, and replaced them with their own stooges in 2014. Their resistance culminated in a divorce of Crimea from Ukraine, and a stalemate in the Donbas area. To avoid further bloodshed, an accord was signed, Minsk II, but never implemented. Which resistance do you pick to support? On which grounds?
jake
your relatives were which?
Your question most likely refers to my previous statement that family of mine participated in the resistance? Or what?
jake
Yes.
Pat, before answering that question, I want you to understand that I’m not in the business of borrowing from other people which I cannot hope to repay, which includes the courage and stories of hardship of some of my ancestors, immediate and indirect family. I can only hope to be as courageous as they were in the face of adversity, in order to do what is right.
No communists in my direct family, but the grandfather of my former partner, and great-grandfather of my son, was in the military arm of the resistance as a communist. My own immediate family were not ‘Bible Belt’ either, though that would have suited them better than communist. They were not shooting, or throwing bombs, but defrauded the Germans to provide for ‘onderduikers’ (people in hiding), of which they had some in their own home, while my teenage mother ran errands. My dad evaded being sent to Germany as a worker by going ‘underground’, while his dad was not in Holland, since he left the country as a captain on a British owned merchant freighter, evading German bombers on his way to England, to return from Asia after the war, blind and extremely fragile, because he had been imprisoned in Changi slave-labor camp, Singapore, by the Japanese, when they overran Indonesia while he was on leave, after sailing for the allied forces for two years non-stop. An uncle of mine perished when his ship, a merchant vessel, was torpedoed in the south Atlantic. Other family members died in camps where they were taken by occupying forces.
The father of my wife was buried in France as a war hero, since he (and his dad, uncles and nephews) had fought in the French resistance on the side of General the Gaulle.
Meduza is a journal run by oppositional journalists from Russia that can´t publish in their home country anymore. Meduza is therefore based in one of the Baltic states. In April Meduza published an article by one of their underground reporters from Kherson. Of course the reporter highlighted demonstrations against the occupiers and the suppression of anti-Russian agitators. But it was altogether striking that not only where anti-Russian demonstrations allowed to go ahead but even more striking was the fact that there were no more than a few hundred taking part. And that in a city of 400 000.
Another journalist for Meduza whom I know personally very well told me by phone that half the people he talked with in (still Ukrainian) Kramatorsk in June were fanatically pro Russian. Likewise a reporter from Rolling Stone who wrote a glowing piece about the Ukrainian army mentioned in his article that the Ukrainian soldiers, that he was accompanying suspected the local population to spy for the Russians.
That accords very well with polling data before and after 2014. Anybody who looks at the election data from the Donbass and large parts of the South-East with an open mind cannot fail to notice that the vast majority there voted for anti Nato politicians. No more than 10% voted for the nationalist parties that captured the majority in other parts of the country. Striking as well is the fact that after 2014 in the South East voter participation dropped by half. Evidently because after 2014 it was clear that no Anti-Nato party would be allowed to take power in Kiev.
What I write here is not controversial with anybody who has ever been in the Donbass and speaks Russian. And I have been there and do speak Russian. My feeling is, that the people who are directing policy in the West disregard those facts at their own peril. There isn´t and won´t be local popular support in sufficient numbers for a guerilla war in the Southeast. Expecting that and counting on it is a fool´s errand. Things are very different in other parts of the Ukraine. Not for nothing it took the Red Army into the Fifties to subdue the Western parts of Ukraine. Today the Russians would have no chance as a partisans could be resupplied from Poland. I don´t think Moscow would be stupid enough to occupy anything West of the Dnepr
But not in the Southeast. There, as you Jake say, terrorist acts will only further alienate the population and strenghten pro Russian sentiment.
Correction: I don´t think Moscow would be stupid enough to occupy anything West of the Dnepr except the region bordering the Black Sea.
Tom –
No guerrilla war, yet anyway. But there is resistance in the non-LPR portions of northern Luhansk Province. Small so far, posters or Ukrainian flags painted on walls. Grievances and challenges against locals being forcibly conscripted to be cannon fodder. Tired of Russian destruction of their towns and cities. That defiance is growing.
Alas, in LPR itself all resistance was crushed during the previous eight years via torture or murder and disappearance of patriots who objected to being a puppet state run by criminals with no rule of law.
leith
UW/guerilla resistance is never decisive unless it is an authentic local rebellion with widespread popular support that develops an urban underground as well as guerrilla forces. UW/resistance is usually contributary but not decisive.
Leith-
Please spare me the supposed contrast between Ukraine and Russia. Disappearances happened in Ukrainian territories as well. Torture too. Killings of journalists a.s.o.
Nobody knows who was worse. Just looking at the OSCE data over the years I believe that Ukraine might have been worse. Just look at what happened in Odessa. 42 people killed in the Union building in Odessa 2014 by violent Ukrainian extremists and the police looking on. Ukraine and Russia are very similar. Both countries don´t understand the concept “rule of law”. The main difference between the two is that Ukraine never managed the famous (or infamous) vertical of power which is a direct translation from Russian. Meaning one center one center that decides what goes.
Ironically the West, by helping to depose Yanukovitsh, destroyed the last chance of Ukraine to achieve something like that. Selenskyi is being played up by the West as a modern day Churchill. In reality the oligarchs (which were put in their place in Russia) are more powerful than ever. To my mind the West should have never attempted to integrate Ukraine. Better would have been to leave her to her own devices. No matter what, every president of Ukraine in the end turned out to be a headache for the Russians. Yanukovitsh would have been as well. Should you read Russian I very much recommend reading Vladimir Pastukohov: Ukrainskaya Revolutsiya i Russkaya Konttrevolutsiya. The author is half Russian and half Ukrainian and was forced by Putin into exile in Great Britain. He teaches now law at ST.Anthonys at Oxford. The above is his thinking and I believe he is right.
Tom –
I seriously doubt OSCE data shows Ukraine to be worse than the LPR & DPR. Links please.
If what you say is true, then why are members of the OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM) still detained in Donetsk and Luhansk? Why does OSCE have a support program for the government of Ukraine?
Leith-
It is a while back that I read the shocking OSCE report on atrocities committed by Ukrainian nationalists. Wasn´t easy to find again but here it is: https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/e/7/233896.pdf
Saldo was never elected as governor of the Military-Civilian Administration of Kherson Province. He was appointed by the Russian occupiers back in April.
But it seems he was a bit too ambivalent for them, so they gave him the Navalny/Litvinenko treatment and tried to blame it on Ukraine.
Saldo was the target of repeated attempts on his life, according to the article. He was also elected, and reelected as mayor of Kherson. The rumors surrounding his whereabouts since August 5th apparently inspired your conspiracy-glands, but I will keep my powder dry, limiting myself to observing that NATO/Kiev wanted him and his aides dead, as stated in the article. How you arrive at this conclusion that he was ‘ambivalent’, I don’t know. But if that would be the case, then why would the guerilla’s want to kill ‘their Navalny/Litvinenko’? I don’t get it.
Ukrainians should be sending people into Russia to attack them there. Just like the Chechens did.
Nice concept. And the Russians and the Chinese feeding their proxy warriors to attack NATO countries. Leaving Big Brother to divide, and conquer. The wet dream of borderless bliss within a neofeudal, Financial Capitalist world.
You mean like schools and theatres ?
That would probably not have the effect you are hoping for. Quite the contrary. It would be a major boost to the Russian recruiting efforts.
Colonel, an observation:
Arguments here by those who generally condemn Ukrainian acts of resistance to occupation seem to take the form, implicitly or explicitly, of a combination of the following:-
> Russia is justified in its SMO in protecting ethnic Russians
> As Russia feels Ukraine isn’t a viable/real country it sees itself as merely liberating the land Ukrainians happen to live on
> The Ukrainian regime is comprised of Nazis. It is also supported by wicked neocons in the US & NATO who have invaded/occupied many other countries
> Such resistance is not (militarily) effective and Russia is bound to win
It seems to simply not occur to many people that resistance to an occupier may be the absolute moral duty of a patriot – any patriot anywhere. How that patriot feels about the wider circumstances that led to his country being occupied, the rights and wrong of the world, his/her political persuasion and even the chances of success simply have no bearing on this imperative. All 4 of the above being true does not alter the fact than the invader is here and must be fought by every means. It seems to me the folk bemoaning the acts of Ukrainian ‘terrorists’ either have an ideological ax to grind, have lost the ability to recognize a just cause and/or are simply incapable of empathy.
High sentiment but who exactly has the moral high ground here? Can’t the Donbassers make an equally pathetic case about fighting back against tyrannical Galician oppressors? What about all the other folk who believe themselves oppressed ( or in wokespeak, identify as oppressed”)?
What about the application of traditional punishment for freedom fighters/ terrorists?
walrus
The price for rebellion against tyranny is usually death. In Special Forces we expect that along with those we train and help. Sanctimony little becomes you.
Walrus
I doubt the partisans have any illusions about the fate awaiting them if they are caught. Likewise for any spies/Russian collaborators caught assisting the invader in unoccupied territory.
I’m curious as to your use of the word “pathetic”, do you mean it in the pejorative sense? Perhaps it is another symptom of the decay of moral discourse in our society that an act in accordance with what one’s conscience dictates should be seen as having its merits based in terms of the emotional reaction of observers.
Sure the Donbassers whose loyalties lie with Russia and who feel they have been freed from oppression can claim the moral high ground, why not? Russia itself has some grounds upon which to claim the moral high ground, the most important of which was my first point above. Why is it impossible to recognize that claims on both sides may carry moral justification? We seem to have forgotten everything Sophocles and Aeschylus tried to teach us – forgotten that tragedy, by definition, cannot be resolved into right and wrong. And this war is certainly no less tragic than any other.
But we do not need to and must not descend into relativism. The concept of patriotism is a virtue and we should reject any moral scheme in which it is not. If Russia were invaded my sympathies would lie with them. Courage is also a cardinal virtue, hence Col. Lang’s respect for the “brave little bastards” intent on killing him at Song Be. But courageous invaders are still invaders and the merits of an invaded country’s government and its foreign supporters do not alter the fact that a physical invasion of a sovereign nation unequivocally grants its citizens the moral high ground when resisting such.
Tom67 here makes some good points about the demographic in Kherson and the SE of the country in general and if he is right these assassinations may be counterproductive. But we must not forget the overarching importance of Putin’s espoused views of “Vladimir Lenin’s Ukraine” as an errant part of the Russian empire. Why therefore should we expect Russia to stop in Kherson, or even Odessa? Any Ukrainian who wishes to be free of Russian imperial subjugation must choose resistance and we should support them.
If what I have expressed is high sentiment it only reinforces the sadness I feel for the low sentiment which pervades our modern age.
Walrus would have like our “freedom fighters” of the 1770s who took the torches to the Tory govt officials!
Barbara, perhaps you have heard of Samuel Huntington.
He described, in his 1996 Clash of Civilizations,
Ukraine as a “cleft country”.
His analysis is expanded on more recently (2020) here:
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/ukraine-and-clash-civilizations-153636
This internal division within Ukraine shows up in language and election results,
as presented by John Mearsheimer here:
https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4?t=6m05s ; this discussion ends at 8m40s.
With Ukraine so divided, one side or the other may consider itself oppressed, and that is exactly what we have been seeing.
As an example of that oppression, see
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-law-bans-pro-russia-parties-zelenskiy-signs/31849737.html
Combining Ukraine’s cleftness, with Russia’s security fears
(how would we have felt during the Cold War if Mexico or Canada had been offered membership in the Warsaw Pact, were seriously considering it, and in the interim we’re essentially de facto members?),
I don’t see any moral certainty (your “just cause” argument) on either side.
As to empathy, the question is, empathy for whom?
Let me say it: I have empathy for Russia’s fears.
So should you all.
kh
ok you would be a collaborator there or here.
Keith Harbaugh
OK, so your position is clear; Ukraine is not a real/viable country. Do you at least acknowledge that millions of Ukrainian citizens, many of whom are fighting and dying for this artificial construct, take a different view?
The heart of the matter is that one half of the country is taking a different view from the other half. Right? The one you are supporting wants to sell Ukraine to NATO/Davos and this unipolar world it is proclaiming to be in our future, and the other half prefers to be part of Russia/SCO and a multipolar world it is advertising. So, how to work out a solution which avoids even more senseless slaughter?
Jake
Right, although “half” is overdoing it re the Russia sympathizers. But WTF has Davos and the SCO to do with wanting to defend your homeland? You think the guys and gals in the frontline trenches (on either side) spend their days discussing the polarity of the world order? Nah, they leave that to weirdos like us who spend their time pontificating on blogs. Soldiers have much more pressing and mundane concerns and a good deal more humor in their conversations. I envy them that.
A solution will be found and given the number of ‘accidents’ the Russians appear to be having I expect it will come sooner rather than later. After that the Ukrainians might have the time and inclination to worry about politics again.
Barbara Ann, the latest fair elections held in all of Ukraine saw Yanukovych win the majority vote. Well over half of the people voted for him, and he was removed by the minority with the help of Victoria Nuland and her team, supervised by Joe Biden. You may argue all you want to deny that reality, but it is still real.
I do not care what each and every individual offering himself as cannon fodder in this war is thinking, or who made him or her apply for a chance to die in the trenches NATO prepared for them these past eight years. Because the ‘spread’ is way too large to draw firm conclusions. Ask those hapless grunts which were sent to Vietnam, only to return to their country to be spit upon.
In the end, after everything is said and done, this entire fight is about which system will come out on top. You are claiming that Ukrainian nationals are fighting for their country? Which country is that? The EU? With provincial rights left to their local parliament, and not budget authority?
jake
I was spat upon by a Mama Cass look alike but I was hardly hapless.
Jake
“Which country is that?”
Which part of Slava Ukraini! is hard to understand?
I was going to put you down under my category 3, but let’s go with category 2 as well.
Pat, I understand, but how about this fellow countryman:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tixOyiR8B-8
More than a few veterans felt unfortunate to have had that experience, and discover that their political representatives and the media lied to them, used them, and abused them. Hence ‘hapless’. Am I using the wrong word to express that sentiment?
Barbara Ann,
I don’t know the first thing about your categories, and why you feel they are important. Personally I do not try to square the circle. I hesitate to ‘list’ people, even though I use generalizations to explain my thinking. Sure enough I recognize ultra nationalist sentiments which blur a persons thinking, replacing it with ‘Us’, where this person might benefit from thinking a little more about him or herself. Especially when there won’t be a ‘self’ left after ‘Us’ is done with that person. Could have saved ‘Us’ a lot of misery in the past.
If you ‘list’ me as a person who appreciates a soccer match, when the game is played well, but who refuses to wreck havoc when one of the clubs lost the game, I’m glad I’m on that particular list. The former soccer hooligans which enlisted to kill Russians do not strike me as a truly great group of people to be part of, to be honest.
https://www.irishmirror.ie/sport/soccer/soccer-news/scots-grandad-duelling-russians-ukraine-26415331
https://inews.co.uk/news/world/ukraines-football-hooligans-put-combat-training-to-use-in-fight-against-the-russian-enemy-1707828
Let’s see what Huntington actually wrote back in 1996 about Ukraine as a cleft country:
That sure sounds like what has been happening in Ukraine.
That does not deny the reality of Ukraine as a past and current nation-state,
but it certainly raises the possibility of Ukraine going the way of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.
On the one hand, there are those in Ukraine committed to maintaining its past identity as a nation state,
OTOH, the issue Huntington raised above will resonate with some,
especially those who were unhappy with their position in that nation state.
As to my position, it is in total agreement with what William S. Smith, the author of the National Interest article cited above, wrote in 2020:
How tragic that many in the West, rather than pushing for a compromise,
seem more interested in other goals, often involving demonization of Putin, Russia, and the old Czarist regime.
Russia shouldn’t have invaded then. It takes 2 to tango.
Blaming the west is a cop out! As if the Russians didn’t have any agency?
Tom
we’ll se how fanatically pro Russian they remain when the front reaches them and their town is destroyed.
Err “not liked”
Still some mystery regarding Saki Airbase. A Ukrainian government official is saying it was Special Forces sabotage that did the damage. On the other hand there are some OSINT sources pointing to missile impact craters in todays satellite imagery. Maybe the Grom since US has not given them ATACMS yet. But Romania or Turkey or ??? have ATACMS and could have provided. If it was missiles, why didn’t the S400 system respond? Were the operators asleep at the wheel? Or are the various S400 radars so much more junk provided by Putin’s corrupt defense acquisition system?
Meanwhile there is a 100 kilometer traffic jam of people leaving Crimea.
As reported in the NY Times today:
… Ukrainian military official with knowledge of the situation said that Ukrainian forces were behind the blast at the Saki Air Base on the western coast of Crimea.
“This was an air base from which planes regularly took off for attacks against our forces in the southern theater,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters. The official would not disclose the type of weapon used in the attack, saying only that “a device exclusively of Ukrainian manufacture was used.”
… The senior Ukrainian official said the attack involved partisan resistance forces loyal to the government in Kyiv, but he would not disclose whether those forces carried out the attack or assisted regular Ukrainian military units in targeting the base, as has sometimes occurred in other Russian-occupied territories.
To reach targets deep behind enemy lines, Ukraine has increasingly turned to guerrillas in Russian-occupied territories, officials said. Partisans, for instance, have helped Ukrainian forces target Russian bases and ammunition depots in the Kherson Region, Ukrainian officials say.
Reporting in the Washington Post:
… Hints from Ukrainian officials that special operations forces may have been involved have put a spotlight on the activities of what is officially known as the National Resistance, and which many Ukrainians refer to as “partisans.”
Led by Ukraine’s special operations forces and under the overall command of the Ukrainian army, the shadowy force made up of trained infiltrators and local sympathizers has been stepping up activities aimed at disrupting Russia’s logistics, administration, and command and control, according to Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council.
The force is secret and details of its operations can’t be disclosed, he said in an interview.
“If you ask me if there are partisans, I will answer: There are. They are everywhere. We prepared in advance and we have them,” he said. “What they are doing is another matter. It depends on what tasks and when they will be received. And there is and will be resistance.”
… Guerrilla activity has been especially prevalent in the southern Kherson region, just north of Crimea. In June, a Russian-installed official in Kherson was killed in a mysterious bomb blast on his way to work, one of a number of assassinations attributed to the resistance. Posters around the city made by Ukrainian resistance groups have warned those working with the Russians that partisans would come for them too, according to images posted on social media.
… One flier read, “If a HIMARS can’t reach, a partisan will help,” a reference to the U.S.-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems that have given the Ukrainians the ability to strike up to 50 miles behind Russian lines.
BBC: before and after satellite pics of Russia’s Crimea airbase
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62500560