Russian TV Worries Over Crimea and Black Sea Fleet

A Kremlin propagandist has expressed concern at the spate of Kyiv's strikes on Crimea and said that Moscow must respond by stepping up attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure.

The comments on the state-run Russia-1 channel by Yevgeny Buzhinsky, a former military officer, follow what British defense officials have described as the most "damaging and coordinated" attacks on Moscow's Black Sea Fleet since the start of the war.

Ukraine's special forces said they had killed Moscow's top admiral in Crimea, Viktor Sokolov, along with 33 other officers in last week's missile attack on the fleet's Sevastopol headquarters, although these casualties have not been confirmed by Russia's Ministry of Defense.

With missiles and drones, Ukraine has increased attacks in the Black Sea and on the Crimean Peninsula which Kyiv has vowed to recapture from Russian occupation. Russia's Defense Ministry said that earlier this month, Ukraine attacked a naval shipyard with 10 cruise missiles.

Buzhinsky told the program 60 Minutes in a clip shared on X, formerly Twitter, by Russia watcher Julia Davis that the strikes on Crimea were getting "more and more brazen" and noted how the chief of Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence, Krylo Budanov, had said strikes against the Kerch Bridge, linking Crimea with Russia's Krasnodar region, would "continue until it is destroyed."

He said Ukrainian forces are waiting for the delivery of long-range missile systems such as ATACMS from the U.S. or Taurus from Germany, which will "all be directed at our Black Sea Fleet and Crimea" rather than regions of western Russia, where air defenses in border regions such as Kursk and Belgorod were being strengthened.

Buzhinsky also said that after the end of summer, Moscow's forces had "resumed strikes on energy infrastructure" last week which left hundreds of Ukrainian towns without electricity.

"I think that as we get closer to winter, these strikes should intensify so they can't enjoy their lives," he said, "let them gather firewood, dried animal dung and other types of fuel."

On X, Davis described the sentiment as "Russia's military approach in a nutshell...to make Ukrainians suffer."

Newsweek reached out to the Russian and Ukrainian Defense Ministries for comment.

The British Ministry of Defense said on Tuesday that Ukraine's attacks on Crimea had "been more damaging and more coordinated than thus far in the war" and while damage to the Black Sea Fleet "is almost certainly severe but localised."

The update added that the fleet is "almost certainly" capable of continuing to conduct cruise missile strikes and local security patrols, although its ability to enforce a de facto blockade of Ukrainian ports "will be diminished."