INTREP360 INTELLIGENCE REPORT

05.29.2026: CRIMEA IS IN PLAY!

May 29th, 2026

It’s been over 30 years now since Buzz Lightyear boldly proclaimed, “To Infinity – and Beyond!” in the Pixar classic movie Toy Story.

And now, 52 months after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his ‘special military operation’ – the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and General Oleksandr Syrskyi, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), are in position to proclaim, “To Crimea – and beyond!”

As retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges – former Commander of U.S. Army Europe – has said since the beginning of the war, and we have often repeated, “Crimea is the decisive terrain.”

In February 2023, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor and Hodges brilliantly described the significance of the peninsula and what it would take to retake it with Chuck Todd on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Watch the video here:

And while others doubted – Ukraine believed. They have worked to set conditions to liberate Crimea, and today, are in the process of completing its isolation by shutting down the ‘land bridge,’ and putting the Kerch Strait Bridge at risk.

Let’s take a look at how that happened.

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THE STRATEGY

The strategy has evolved over time. The variables have changed, and so has the mission.

Initially it was to defend the homeland and simply survive. Then, with weapons and munitions provided by the U.S. and NATO – counterattack. That led to stalemate – hold in place, mobile defenses, and attrition warfare.

With a general unwillingness by the West to let Ukraine use their weapons to strike Russian targets in the Russian interior – Ukraine turned to producing their own weapons, which allowed Kyiv to assume the initiative and take the fight directly to Russia.

As we stated in the Kyiv Post, “Kyiv no longer asks permission to strike targets in Russia with Western weapons – they use their own manufactured weapons (Fire Point 1/2/5 & 7/9) to enforce Ukrainian sanctions” and to sever Russia’s ability to sustain their forces in Crimea.

The vastness of Russia no longer provides security – government facilities, ports, refineries, pipelines, airfields, munitions storage facilities, weapons production facilities, military headquarters, air defense systems, radars and more, are now all in range.

Sanctuary in Russia was lost – as Putin acknowledged by turning to President Donald Trump to negotiate a ceasefire for his May 9th Victory Parade in Moscow.

The strategy fundamentally shifted away from the ‘close fight’ on the battlefields of Ukraine to the ‘deep fight’ – with the primary effort oriented towards defeating Russia’s ability to wage war by targeting their principle sources of revenue: oil.

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KILL ZONES

Meanwhile, on the battlefields of Ukraine, a revolution in military affairs was underway to defeat Russian forces: drone warfare.

Russian casualties surpassed 1,361,070 today. And for the fifth straight month (December 2025 – April 2026), Russian casualties exceeded recruitment, turning the Kremlin’s strategy of attrition warfare on its head and forcing Putin to consider a general mobilization to continue his war.

Photo Credit: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Losses of the Russian Occupiers in Ukraine.

As we wrote in our April 24th edition of the INTREP360 Intelligence Report, the most effective and devastating use of drones by AFU was put on display when Kyiv implemented their ‘kill zone’ strategy.

The Military Show brilliantly describes the strategy employed by Ukraine to achieve this objective.

You can watch the video here: https://www.facebook.com/reel/2203707390401664

There are basically four tenets to the strategy:

1. Isolate & destroy Russian ground forces in the designated kill zones;

2. Deny logistical support; then

3. Target ‘mass’ – Russian soldiers – before they can arrive on the battlefields of Ukraine while in their assembly and staging areas outside the kill zones.

4. Maintain persistent surveillance over the kill zones to trigger attack drones upon movement.

Photo credit: AFU. The Kill Zone.

The results?

90 percent of Russian soldiers are being killed before they even get to the front lines — and without ever confronting a frontline Ukrainian soldier. 96 percent of those casualties come from remotely-operated drones.

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MAKING CRIMEA UNTENABLE

When Lt. Gen. Hodges was asked by Chuck Todd on NBC’s Meet the Press “what do the Ukrainians need from us to execute that plan [liberate Crimea],” his answer was succinct – long range precision weapons. Isolate Crimea from the rest of Russia – deny use of the land bridge and Kerch Strait Bridge – then you “make the peninsula untenable for Russian forces.”

And that’s what they have been doing.

The Black Sea Fleet was forced to vacate their headquarters at the Sevastopol Naval Base after it was destroyed by Ukrainian missiles and drones – along with approximately 30 percent of their combat assets.

Ports, airfields, railheads, air defense assets, radars, and the Kerch Strait Bridge have all been targeted – repeatedly. And now, the ‘land bridge’ connecting Ukraine to Crimea – now refered to as the ‘highway to hell’ – is under assault, distrupting logistical operations.

The isolation of Crimea is coming to fruition – reminiscent of the seige at Yorktown during the American Revolution as we described in the Kyiv Post in July 2025.

And now the task is to make Crimea untenable for the forces occupying the peninsula with those long range precision weapons the General described earlier. “The first phase or the first step to the liberation of Crimea – to isolate it. To cut that road that goes to Dzhankoi, to destroy the bridge … And then number two, is make it untenable, unusable for the Russians.”

As the General noted, Ukraine now has the “capability to strike every square meter of Crimea with precision weapons capable of reaching anywhere on the peninsula and destroying airfields, the remnants of the Russian fleet, and logistics infrastructure. Ukraine should continue striking these targets so that Russian forces realize they cannot stay there and that Crimea no longer provides them with any military advantage.”

The fait accompli comes when Ukraine destroys the Kerch Strait Bridge to complete the isolation. According to Hodges, “Once you get the Kerch Bridge down again, this completely changes the game for Crimea, which is what matters the most.”

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SUMMARY

Ukraine may have finally turned the corner. They have seized the initiative with a strategy that seemingly has Moscow reeling.

Their strategy has evolved into:

1. Hold the Donbas;

2. Deny oil revenues to Russia;

3. Attrite Russian forces in mass – with a goal of 50,000 a month;

4. Isolate Crimea; and then

5. Defeat Russia

The Kremlin recognizes there inability to defeat the AFU, and has resumed their terrorist bombardements in earnest, targeting Ukrainian cities with ballistic missiles, drones and Oreshnik missiles in an attempt to force Zelensky to accept their maximalist demands.

What they can’t win on the battlefield, they hope to win through fear and intimidation.

The Kremlin recently warned nations with embassies in Kyiv to evacuate their embassies. On Tuesday at a United Nations, nearly 50 countries issued a joint statement condemning the Russian threat. The U.S. and representatives of the European Union publicly said they will maintain their diplomatic presence in the capital city.

According to the Kyiv Independent, “the embassies of France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Japan confirmed that operations continue as planned.”

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev responded: “The EU has said it will maintain its diplomatic presence in Kyiv unchanged, despite Russia’s warnings. Well, apparently they’ve got diplomats to spare and need to trim the headcount.”

In addition, Putin puppet Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko felt compelled to demonstrate a military capability along his border with Ukraine – a “rotational mobilization of selected units to prepare for war.”

Robert Brovdi, who commands Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, promptly warned Lukashenko “against actions that could further draw Minsk into the war,” adding that Ukraine had “identified 500 potential targets in Belarus.”

And to divert NATO’s attention away from Ukraine, the Kremlin wants NATO to believe they may attack the Baltic States.

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ICYMI

Our second column ran in the The Washington Star ran today – see it here:

Hamas Confirms Israel Killed Its New Military Leader

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COMING SOON

Tomorrow at 2:20 PM EST, Jon will join the team at TVP World for a live interview on their Main News edition to discuss the situation in Ukraine.

You can watch it here: https://tvpworld.com/51656539/tvp-world-live

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Thank you for reading. Have a great weekend and we’ll see you Monday. Please subscribe, comment & share. We truly appreciate it!

Jon & Mark

Follow Jon on X at @JESweet2022 or on Bluesky at @JonSweet.bsky.social. Follow Mark on X at @MCTothSTL or on Bluesky at @MarkToth.bsky.social.