Amid the increasingly frequent explosions in Crimea, which likely are carried out by Ukrainian forces, Russia has decided to remove ten of its fighters from the occupied Crimea.
According to European Pravda, this is stated in a secret NATO report at the disposal of Business Insider.
According to an August 22 NATO report, "Russia is likely to withdraw its air force in Crimea to prevent further attacks from Ukraine."
It is claimed that the Russian armed forces have already transferred ten of their fighters from Crimea back to Russian territory to avoid further losses of aircraft. It concerns about six SU-35S fighters and four MiG-31BM interceptors.
Despite these maneuvers, the Crimean Belbek airfield near Sevastopol remains "Russia's most important airfield to provide air support in the south of Ukraine and over the Black Sea," NATO intelligence officials write.
In Belbek, according to the Alliance, about 32 Russian fighters are still deployed. These are mostly SU-27 fighters, but there are also a small number of modern SU-35S and MiG-31BM.
In addition, Russia has increased the number of its surface-to-air tactical missiles in Crimea to counter further attacks by Ukraine, such as drones.
"Ukrainian UAVs are difficult to detect Russian air defense systems as targets. This problem is common among all the forces that Russia deploys in Ukraine," the secret document says.
Recall that in recent weeks, explosions have occurred at Russian military bases. Among other things, an attack was carried out on the Saky base of the Russian air force.
As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, the Russian Federation said that at night air defense worked near the Belbek airfield in Crimea.
The ISW believes that Russia will probably need to withdraw some of its forces from the front line to "defend" Crimea occupied by it. It is noted that Russia's inability to stop attacks on its facilities in the Crimea can cause discontent in Russian society.
On August 18, Politico noted that the United States supports Ukraine's strikes on the Crimea occupied by Russia.
On August 18, on social networks of the temporarily occupied Crimea, local residents reported numerous explosions near the Belbek airfield in Sevastopol and near Kerch.
On August 17, there were reports that the head of the occupation administration of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, and the so-called speaker of the State Duma of Crimea, Vladimir Konstantinov, had left the peninsula and were not going to return.
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