A Ukrainian Storm Shadow missile took out a major Russian vehicle repair site in Crimea, report says
Ukraine took out a Russian military repair depot in Crimea, per an unofficial Russian source.
The site was reportedly struck by the UK-supplied Storm Shadow missile.
On the same day, Russia announced a nearby town had to be evacuated due to a hail of drone attacks.
A Russian vehicle repair base in Crimea was struck by a Ukrainian Storm Shadow missile on Monday, according to a Russian source.
The base was hit by one of four cruise missiles fired by Ukrainian Su-24 jets overnight, according to the Russian Telegram outlet Rybar, with one missile striking the repair depot near Dzhankoy, a town to the north of the peninsula, and the other three striking an ammunition store.
Insider was unable to independently verify the claim, which was also highlighted in a briefing by the US-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War.
Rybar is a prominent pro-Kremlin Russian blogger with more than a million followers, and is rumored to be connected to the Kremlin and the Wagner Group.
Dzhankoy and its surrounding villages were evacuated on Monday due to Ukrainian drone strikes, Russian news outlet TASS reported the Russian-installed leader of Crimea as saying. This would include the site where the repair depot is located.
TASS did not mention the reported Storm Shadow strikes, but said that 11 drones were shot down while one destroyed an ammunition pile.
According to Rybar, the drone attack preceded the Storm Shadow strikes.
The vehicle repair base south of Dzhankoy has served at earlier points in the war as a major repair hub, according to Forbes, housing hundreds of fighting vehicles, tanks, and trucks being fixed up for the invasion.
It's unclear how many were on-site, or indeed hit, on Monday.
But the episode highlights the growing pressures the UK-supplied Storm Shadow has laid on Russian command and control.
Ukraine has had its hands on the missile, also known as SCALP, since earlier this year.
With a range of up to 155 miles, the air-launched missile has put vast swathes of Russian-held territory within reach of Ukraine, pressuring Russian commanders to move their supply lines further behind the front lines.
The site of the Crimea repair depot is roughly 130 miles behind the front lines of the conflict.
Firing a Storm Shadow is both risky and expensive, as experts previously told Insider, and this means Ukraine is likely reserving its use for concentrated, high-value targets.
This could also pressure Russia's army to disperse its depots and ammunition caches into smaller, more nimble formations — which would be a fresh challenge for Russia's centralized, Soviet-style military command.
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