ATACMS will not destroy Russian aviation in Crimea - Kiev military expert
Ukraine was able to damage Russian aircraft in Berdyansk and Lugansk by hitting airfields with US-supplied ATACMS cluster munition missiles only because these airfields were civilian.
Ukrainian military expert Ivan Kirichevsky stated this on Radio NV, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
According to the expert, the airfields in Crimea are protected and built for military purposes, so you should not expect that the damage will be corresponding.
“If we take purely the expectations of civilians, then, you know, you shouldn’t hope for success, because now the period is such that there is no need to build high expectations. What is the nuance? The Russians started, it wasn’t just that they built airfields for themselves in Berdyansk and Lugansk - they used airports that were already abandoned, civilian ones.
We just started using it this summer and felt very safe that we weren’t doing anything like covering helicopters with tires or anything like that – we were just crowding these helicopters. Maybe that’s why these two airfields were chosen as targets for the first ATACMS strike against Russian aviation, because they felt safe there,” the expert said.
“Still, if we continue further, the airfields in Crimea are also Russian military airfields with classic shelters that were built back in Soviet times. Accordingly, covering targets with cassettes there will be, to put it mildly, more difficult, because these shelters were built in case of the presence of some such destructive elements. Therefore, civilian Ukrainians definitely don’t need to draw infographics and tell them that we will now land all aviation in Crimea,” Kirichevsky said.
ATACMS won't destroy Russian aviation in Crimea – Kyiv military expert