The Kerch Strait has become a killing ground. Multiple intelligence sources confirm that Ukrainian long-range precision fires have systematically degraded Russian fuel depots and railheads across occupied Crimea over the past 72 hours. The effect is cumulative and devastating.
Military analysts are now referring to the collapse of fuel distribution in the peninsula as a strategic inflection point. Russia’s Southern Military District is consuming its tactical reserves at three times the sustainable rate. Heavy armour units near the Zaporizhzhia front are reporting critical fuel shortfalls.
This is not a temporary disruption. This is a deliberate campaign of logistical interdiction designed to freeze Russian operational momentum before the autumn mud sets in. The core vulnerability remains the Kerch Bridge and its associated railway corridor.
While Russian air defence systems have improved the bridge’s survivability, the oil depot at Feodosia and the pipeline nodes near Dzhankoi are now effectively neutralised. Satellite imagery from 1430 hours local time shows no active unloading at the port of Sevastopol for the second consecutive day. Ukraine is executing a textbook multi-domain attack: cyber intrusions have scrambled railway scheduling software; Special Operations teams have sabotaged pump stations; and the combination of Storm Shadow and ATACMS missiles has destroyed at least seven major fuel storage points since Sunday.
The Kremlin’s response has been characteristically erratic. Emergency fuel convoys are being routed through the occupied territories but are arriving at significantly reduced capacity due to attrition from loitering munitions. The Russian Black Sea Fleet, already constrained by Ukrainian naval drones, is now burning through reserve fuel at its Novorossiysk base just to maintain minimal patrols.
The question on the ground is not whether the Russian defensive line will hold but how quickly it will collapse when ammunition and fuel cannot be moved forward. Western defence officials privately assess that the next 10 to 14 days are critical. If Ukraine can sustain this interdiction rate, the Russian formations across Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces will be forced into a tactical pause.
A pause that Kyiv cannot afford to allow to mature into a reconstitution. Logistical warfare is ugly. It lacks the drama of a breakthrough.
But it is the mechanism by which mechanised armies die. The fuel crisis in Crimea is not a headline. It is a death certificate being written one destroyed tanker at a time.
