Nearly 24 hours after the explosions at a Russian military air base in Crimea, the mystery remains, Wednesday August 10, around the circumstances of this incident which, officially, left one dead and several injured. 

Moscow ensures that it is an accident linked to an explosion in an ammunition depot.

But Sergueï Axionov, the Russian governor of Crimea, at the same time raised the level of terrorist alert, suggesting that the authorities fear an act of sabotage and “are becoming more worried about security in the region”, assures the New York Times.

Accident, sabotage or missile?

On the side of kyiv, it is a very different version of the facts which is put forward.

"A Ukrainian government official, on condition of anonymity, told the Washington Post that it was the work of Ukrainian special forces," said Isabelle Khurshudyan, the head of the Ukraine bureau of the American newspaper, on Twitter. .

The New York Times, for its part, maintains that Ukrainian military officials assured it that this attack had been carried out by “resistance groups loyal to kyiv and active in territory occupied by Russia”. 

The possibility that the Ukrainians managed to hit this air base with a missile should not be excluded either.

"The videos available since yesterday show significant damage, not compatible with the thesis of sabotage on site - this would have required large quantities of explosives, difficult to transport near a base probably well protected by Russian forces" , underlines Huseyn Aliyev, specialist in the Ukrainian-Russian conflict at the University of Glasgow.

But the missile thesis has a catch: Russia's Novofedorivka air base is more than 200 kilometers from the front line, and the only weapons capable of striking at such a distance were delivered to kyiv by NATO allies. NATO.

These nations have always insisted that their military equipment be used for defensive purposes only, and not to knock Russia out of Ukrainian territory.

It is probably for this reason that Ukrainian officials on condition of anonymity are multiplying statements suggesting that it was an operation carried out by a resistance network or Ukrainian special forces.

The Russians' insistence on attributing these explosions to an accident is also understandable: if Ukraine had been able to hit a target so far from the front line, "it would be rather humiliating for Moscow and its intelligence services" , judge Taras Fedirko, political scientist and anthropologist specializing in Ukraine at the University of St-Andrews, Scotland. 

Pro-Russian governor of Kherson poisoned

Even if it was a missile launched from Ukraine, it probably wouldn't have been able to hit the mark "without the support of pro-kyiv partisan groups on site providing useful information like GPS coordinates", supposes Huseyn Aliyev. 

These explosions in Crimea are a reminder that the war is not fought only on the front: in the territories occupied by Russia, kyiv “is relying more and more on networks of resistance or partisans to inflict setbacks on the Russian army ”, says Huseyn Aliyev.

This is particularly flagrant in Kherson, in the south of the country, where Volodymyr Saldo, appointed in April by Moscow governor of this region occupied since the beginning of March, was poisoned and then rushed to a hospital in Russia, Sunday August 7.

An operation that would have been carried out by the local resistance.

“Russian patrols are regularly attacked in the evening by pro-Ukrainian partisans in this city”, adds Huseyn Aliyev.

Other occupied cities in the south of the country are increasingly the scene of acts of sabotage or targeted assassinations, noted Alexander Motyl, an American specialist on Ukraine.

On the military blog "1945", he listed around twenty incidents that had occurred since the beginning of April in Melitopol and Berdyansk – between Kherson and Mariupol – and around Zaporijjia, a little further north.

These attacks take very diverse forms such as the assassinations of Russian soldiers, that of a pro-Russian Ukrainian blogger, sabotage of railways or even attacks against Russian radar stations.

Guerrilla acts that Russia should have expected from the moment its troops put a boot on Ukrainian soil.

The promotion of partisan groups has been part of “Ukraine's defense strategy since 2014”, recalls the daily The Guardian. 

War Propaganda and a Real Threat to the Russian Army

In January 2022, as the Russian-Ukrainian crisis escalated, kyiv “passed a law on the defense of territory providing a legal framework for the creation of groups of voluntary fighters”, underlines Taras Fedirko.

But it was not until “about mid-April that these resistance fighters were operational on the ground”, specifies Huseyn Aliyev.

Most of the networks existed for a long time only on paper because “the structures were not at all supported financially and logistically by the authorities”, adds this researcher. 

For Taras Fedirko, it is still very difficult today to know to what extent these groups of partisans are made up of local resistance fighters or elements from outside, “whether soldiers or members of the special forces”.

“There is, in any case, a level of sophistication in the organization of operations – planning poisonings, following targets or blowing up railway tracks – which requires military training for at least some members of these groups. ”, believes Taras Fedirko. 

It is also complicated to know to what extent Kyiv purposely exaggerates the effectiveness of these partisans.

“It is obviously part of war propaganda,” recognizes Huseyn Aliyev.

Some groups, such as the Berdyansk Partisan Army, are very active on social networks to threaten the invader or Ukrainians tempted to collaborate with the Russians.

“Their goal is quite clear: to suggest that there is always hope as long as there is resistance and to make potential collaborators understand that they are being watched”, summarizes Taras Fedirko. 

But even if there is a part of exaggeration, “these resistance fighters have become a very serious problem for the Russian army”, assures Huseyn Aliyev.

On the one hand, the acts of sabotage and the targeted assassinations “force part of the Russian soldiers to concentrate on the hunt for the partisan instead of fighting on the front”, observes Taras Fedirko. 

On the other hand, “it is also an important source of information for the Ukrainian army”, estimates Huseyn Aliyev.

For him, the Ukrainian artillery could not effectively target the Russian ammunition depots without the information transmitted by these partisans, at the forefront to follow the Russian movements. 

This is also why the explosions at the air base in Crimea are important.

“It should not be forgotten that until now, there were no or very few signs of any resistance in this region”, stresses Huseyn Aliyev.

If the attack was indeed carried out with local support, it means that “kyiv decided to invest in the development of a network in Crimea”, notes this researcher. In other words, the lines of supplies from this region – essential for the Russian offensive in southern Ukraine – will no longer be safe for the Russian army. 

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