Last night and this morning, Ukraine continued its middle-strike campaign to isolate the occupied Crimean peninsula in the south of the country. Ukrainian drones struck two Russian military-support ships, a near-finished ferry, and air defenses guarding the Kerch Strait in occupied Crimea on 26 June, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said. A large fire broke out at the shipyard, and overnight the occupiers shut the Kerch Strait crossing, leaving a queue that stretched roughly 15 kilometers by morning.
What the "Alpha" unit hit
The SBU said its "Alpha" Special Operations Center drones struck military-supply vessels at the Zatoka shipyard in occupied Kerch. The drones hit the project 15310 cable ships Volga and Vyatka, along with the cargo-passenger ferry Petropavlovsk, which was 96% complete. A large-scale fire broke out on the vessels after the strikes, according to SBU.
Unofficial Ukrainian sources also separately reported the fire raging near the air-defense positions and airfield in occupied Kerch, confirmed by NASA FIRMS data.
The SBU's drones from the unit also hit weaponry and a radar from an S-400 air-defense system covering the Kerch Strait, the agency said.
A crossing shut, then a 15-kilometer line
The occupiers closed the Kerch Strait crossing from 23:50 to 06:14 during the air alert, the crossing's operational information channel reported. By 8 a.m., 1,300 cars waited to leave the peninsula from the Kerch side, with another 710 trying to enter from the Russian side at Taman.
Occupied Crimea’s grid takes another night of strikes as Yalta and Sevastopol lose power
By 10 a.m. the queue had grown to 2,760 vehicles, 1,780 of them trying to get out of occupied Crimea. By noon, the wait from the Kerch side stretched to about five hours.
The Russian monitoring Telegram channel Astra put the line at no less than 15 kilometers on the evening of 25 June. Most of the cars carried fuel canisters, an administrator of a crossing chat group wrote — in trunks, on back seats, some on roofs. Drivers were heading to mainland Russia to refuel as the occupied peninsula's pumps ran dry.
Fuel tankers intended to relieve the fuel crisis stood among the cars in the general queue, Exilenova+ noted. The occupation authorities recently doubled the limit on liquids carried over the crossing, from 100 to 200 liters, a change driven by the shortage.
A night of explosions across the peninsula
Local residents reported drone swarms and explosions over Kerch overnight, the monitoring channel Krymsky Veter reported. Satellite data from NASA FIRMS later showed fires at the former Baherovo airfield near Kerch, where Russian forces have placed Pantsir-S1 systems and radars, Exilenova+ reported. Blasts were also heard near Yany Kapu ("Krasnoperekopsk") and in the Yevpatoriia district, and the occupation authorities sounded the air alert in Sevastopol twice during the night.
A “fiery” night over occupied Crimea: Ukraine’s drone forces logged a 60-target sweep
The strikes the night before
The 26 June raid followed a heavy sweep a day earlier. On 25 June, Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS) hit 38 targets across occupied Crimea, SBS commander Robert Brovdi said.
The list ran through three coastal radars, the Tavrida thermal power plant in Simferopol, an oil depot in Dzhankoi, gas compressor stations at Zhuravlivka and Kliuchi, the Sevastopol and Simferopol electrical substations, and an anti-aircraft gun.
