Kyiv regards the liberation of Crimea as a legitimate war goal. The Kremlin officially acknowledges that the annexed peninsula is currently at risk of drone attacks. At the same time, President Putin's spokesman assured that the military and authorities had everything under control.
After several drone strikes in Russia-annexed Crimea, the Kremlin has acknowledged a risk of Ukrainian attacks on the peninsula. "There are certainly risks because the Ukrainian side is continuing its policy of organizing terrorist attacks," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists. "On the other hand, the information we receive indicates that effective countermeasures are being taken."
According to the authorities, the Russian Navy shot down a drone over the Black Sea near the city of Sevastopol. Sevastopol is the largest city in Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, and is where the Russian Black Sea Fleet is based. "As usual, our military did a good job," said the governor of the Sevastopol region, Mikhail Rasvoyaev. Meanwhile, the Russian secret service FSB arrested two residents of Sevastopol. The FSB accused them of spying for Ukraine in Crimea, it said in a statement.
The Russian military used Crimea as one of the bases for launching aggressive war in Ukraine. She had recently been attacked again and again. In October, the Crimean Bridge, which connects the peninsula to mainland Russia, was partially damaged in an attack. Moscow blamed Kyiv for it.
The Kremlin ruled out the incorporation of further new Ukrainian territories. "There's no question of that," Peskow continued. Rather, there is "a lot of work" to wrest the incorporated areas from Ukrainian control. Russia had annexed the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions under international protest from Ukraine and the West. No country recognizes this breach of international law. Peskov spoke literally of a "liberation" of the areas occupied by Ukraine. International law, on the other hand, clearly sees Russia as the occupying power, and the territories belong to Ukraine.
