“The families of senior officers in the Black Sea Fleet of Russia have left Crimea in recent weeks, according to the Ukrainian partisan movement Atesh, which announced it on Sunday, April 20.
According to the source, Russian authorities issued an internal directive at the beginning of April imposing increased security measures in all military units in the occupied peninsula. These measures include increased surveillance, secret patrols carried out by reservists dressed in civilian clothing, and efforts to conceal military equipment. Additionally, all leave for Russian military personnel in Crimea has been suspended, reports The Kyiv Independent.
“At present, there is panic among the Russian Black Sea Fleet units,” Atesh reported in a post on Telegram. The information could not be independently verified by the Ukrainian publication.
Ukraine has repeatedly launched coordinated attacks on strategic Russian military targets in Crimea since the beginning of the war. In early April, the Ukrainian military intelligence services announced that they had hit two Russian military ships and an anti-aircraft defense system.
On April 13, Friedrich Merz, leader of the German conservative party CDU and future chancellor, suggested that the provision of Taurus missiles to Ukraine would allow for precise strikes on high-value Russian military targets in Crimea, including the strategic Kerch Bridge that connects the peninsula to mainland Russia.
Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, and the peninsula has since been used as a Russian military base.
The Atesh movement frequently carries out sabotage actions in Russia and in the occupied Ukrainian regions. On March 9, the group sabotaged a railway line connecting occupied Crimea to the front line in the Zaporizhia region, disrupting Russian supply routes. A similar attack was reported in the Russian region of Smolensk on March 23.”