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Scores of targeted attacks against supply routes, part of what Kyiv calls a “logistics lockdown,” has caused gasoline shortages.
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Ukraine is using its expanding fleet of attack drones to choke vital supply routes into Crimea, causing gasoline shortages and disrupting the summer holiday season as Kyiv tries to cut the peninsula off entirely from Russia.
When Moscow illegally annexed Crimea in 2014 , its precarious geographical position, physically detached from Russia proper, posed a raft of challenges. After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine eight years later, the Kremlin justified the war in part as a mission to take territory in southern Ukraine that would give Russia a “land bridge” to Crimea, providing reliable supply routes.
Now, Ukraine is pounding those routes. Kyiv has in recent weeks struck scores of trucks and trains along the main highway leading to Crimea, and hit bridges connecting the peninsula to Russian-occupied Ukraine.
highway
Ukraine struck both main bridges connecting Crimea to the mainland this month.
Armyansk bridge
Sea of Azov
Chonhar bridge
ferry crossing
Ukraine struck an
oil terminal in May.
RUS.
UKR.
Area of
detail
highway
Ukraine struck both main bridges connecting Crimea to the mainland this month.
Armyansk bridge
Sea of Azov
Chonhar bridge
ferry crossing
Ukraine struck an oil
terminal in May.
RUS.
UKR.
Area of
detail
highway
Ukraine struck both main
bridges connecting Crimea
to the mainland this month.
Sea of Azov
bridge
bridge
ferry crossing
Ukraine struck an
oil terminal in May.
RUS.
UKR.
Area of
detail
Source: The Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project (Russian-held area as of June 11, 2026).
Social media has filled with videos of fuel trucks on fire after drone attacks and of lines of cars snaking around gas stations as deliveries have been disrupted. One photographer documented on social media how she spent eight hours in line at night to get gas.
Robert Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, compared strikes on Russian military vehicles traveling along the exposed highway to “shooting partridges in an open field.”
June 12, 2026
Chonhar bridge
New pontoon
bridge
June 12, 2026
Chonhar bridge
New pontoon
bridge
Source: Planet Labs.
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