Ukraine claims it carried out an overnight operation in Crimea

The overnight operation follows Ukraine’s apparent attack on a Russian missile base in Crimea on Wednesday. Ukraine has been escalating its strikes on the Crimean Peninsula, which operates as a key point for Russian forces to receive equipment and personnel. A key goal of Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive is to cut off Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, thereby making Russian forces in the area totally reliant on vulnerable air and sea connections.• 1

Western defense officials earlier said that Ukraine wasn’t focusing its efforts in the right areas. Speaking to The New York Times, six separate officials alleged that Ukraine needed to change tack to successfully conduct its counteroffensive. The officials said that Ukrainian troops were too spread out across the country’s southern front line, and needed to unite in one area.• 2

Comments from Western officials are part of an emerging narrative that paints Ukraine’s efforts so far as disappointing, war historian Lawrence Freedman writes in his newsletter. Questions are mounting over whether Ukraine can win this war, Freedman notes, but “this gloom is overdone.” In recent weeks, several news articles have circulated criticizing Ukrainian forces, but “it is one of the clichés of strategy that events are unlikely to unfold in ways that meet the timetable and targets of a plan of campaign,” Freedman writes.• 3