On July 20, the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin has arrived in Crimea, a region of Ukraine temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation. The official version is that this trip is the laying of new warships for the Russian navy.

We remind our readers that Putin’s arrival in Crimea took place right after the Russian Federation had, on July 17, suddenly announced a large-scale overhaul of its troops and military fleets positioned at its southwestern regions.

Military Exercises of the Russian Federation Under the Guise of a Sudden Checkup Near the Ukrainian Border

On July 20, the operational tactical missile systems of the missile unit of the 49th Army of the Southern Military District of the Russian Federation, which are located in the Kuban region, have electronically launched the Iskander-M rockets targeting on-shore objects of the conditional adversary, claiming it to be within the plan of an unannounced inspection of the combat readiness.

At the shooting ranges of the Rostov and Volgograd regions of the Russian Federation, and also in the temporarily occupied Crimea, the military exercises were carried out with the troops of the Radio-Electronic Combat (REC) of the Southern Military District of the Russian Federation.

The REC units have gone through the routine of radio-electronic disabling of the radio communication at various wavelengths and hit a number of checkpoints and communication hubs of the conditional adversary, including the channels of control and transmission of data for small unmanned flying devices. The Russian specialists perfected the sabotage of the navigation field in the vicinity of the tactical groups involved in a sudden overhaul and constructed the devices for blinding the precision weapon guidance systems of the conditional adversary during the preparation for Russian air forces’ strikes.

To complete these tasks, the Russians used the Murmansk radio electronic combat complex, whose location had been revealed by the InformNapalm volunteers all the way back in 2015. Also, the Russian REC specialists of the Southwestern military district worked tactic problems using the Krasukha, Borisoglebsk, and Layer-3 complexes, as well as the Zhytel automated obstruction station. The use of all these REC devices was also uncovered by the volunteers of the InformNapalm international intelligence community in occupied Donbas in 2014-2020.

Militarization of Crimea

Russia continues to militarize the occupied Crimea. In 2018, the Ukrinform agency, based on the results of the investigation done by the InformNapalm, published iconographics illustrating how Russia turns the annexed peninsula into a large-scale military base.

In 2019, the Prometheus Center of the Secure Environment Investigations published a unique research, titled, “Crimea Behind the Curtain. Guide to the Occupied Zone.”

The InformNapalm volunteers also have gathered evidence of 32 Russian military units taking part in the invasion of Crimea.

Translated by George Pinchuk. Distribution and reprint with reference to the source is welcome! (Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0) InformNapalm social media pages: Facebook / Twitter / Telegram

InformNapalm is a fully independent community that does not receive any financial support from any country’s government or large donors. Our information resources are funded by our volunteers, as well as our readers sponsoring our project with small donations. You can also support the community by signing up for monthly mini-donations through the Patreon charitable platform. Together we will achieve more!