Vyacheslav Prokofyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP Tuesday marked the third anniversary of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Prigozhin failed and paid with his life. But Russia as a whole, and Russian-occupied Crimea in particular, might have been better off had the man once known as “Putin’s chef” succeeded in overthrowing the regime in Moscow.
Prigozhin understood something Putin could not: The Kremlin is incapable of defeating Ukraine on a conventional military basis.
Putin still appears unable to grasp this. On the day of Prigozhin’s uprising, Russian dead and wounded numbered just over 223,000. Three years later, Russian losses in Ukraine have swelled more than sixfold, nearing 1.4 million.
Putin’s end in Ukraine is coming. Russia cannot continue to sustain these levels of military losses. On Tuesday, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte noted that Putin is losing as many as 35,000 Russian soldiers each month. He also said that Moscow is spending 50 percent of its government budget on its military. For reference, the U.S. spends only about 15 percent of its federal budget (and no more than 9 percent of its overall combined state and national government budgets) on defense.
Even Vladimir Solovyov, considered one of Putin’s top propagandists, is worried. On his top-rated Russia-1 prime time show, Solovyov lashed out at Russia’s Central Bank for keeping interest rates high. He claimed it is causing construction to halt on vital dams and barriers to protect Russian bridges and military infrastructure.
Yet then Solovyov said the quiet part out loud: “We are building dams. But in the last couple of days there has been no work — there is no money. How is that possible?” Putin’s economy, like his war machine, is running on empty.
And it is likely to get worse in Crimea. Since the opening months of Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, the Ukraine has methodically built a multi-domain military campaign designed to degrade and isolate Russian forces based on the strategic Black Sea peninsula.
For much of 2022, Ukraine’s early efforts focused on targeting Russian naval assets and seaports used to reinforce and supply Crimea. As early as March 2022, Kyiv was using ballistic missiles to strike the port at Berdyansk on Sea of Azov. One month later, a Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship missile sank the cruiser Moskva, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea fleet.
Eventually, the Kremlin was forced to evacuate its Sevastopol naval headquarters in Crimea after it was struck by Ukrainian Storm Shadow and SCALP missiles, relocating what remained of its fleet to Novorossiysk and other Russian naval bases in the Black Sea.
By late 2022, Ukraine, using unmanned aerial vehicles, began conducting airstrikes deep inside of Russian-occupied Crimea. In addition to hitting Sevastopol, Ukrainian they struck the vital Saky airbase, destroying or badly damaging Russian aircraft and razing the airfield’s ammunition stores.
Notably, in October 2022, Ukraine conducted one of its earliest special operations when a truck laden with explosives collapsed a large section of road and railway spans of the Kerch Bridge, which connects the Crimean peninsula to the Russian mainland. Even then, Ukraine was focused on isolating Crimea.
During 2023, Ukraine intensified strikes on a multi-domain basis throughout Crimea. This included using sea drones, cruise missiles, special operations raids, and sustained aerial attacks against Russian logistics.
Key Ukrainian successes in 2023 included damaging the Rostov-on-Don submarine and Minsk landing ship in dry dock, as well as a daring beach commando raid on Cape Tarkhankut in western Ukraine. Throughout the year, the Ukrainians increased the tempo of strikes against Russian naval repair facilities and command and control nodes.
In 2024, the introduction of U.S.-made ATACMS and other improvised deep-strike weapons kept Russian forces largely pinned down on the peninsula. Throughout 2025 and 2026, it became clear that the Ukrainians were setting conditions to isolate the peninsula and make it untenable for Russian forces.
In recent weeks and months, Ukraine has increased its military strikes against Russian air defenses, oil depots, fuel facilities, energy infrastructure, and Russian bases throughout the peninsula.
Ukraine is also intensifying its military stranglehold on the Russian land bridge that connects Russia to Crimea. The key Russian logistics route is now restricted to military traffic, which faces persistent interdiction from Ukrainian drones, rendering large portions of it unusable.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his generals are methodically isolating Crimea, turning off the lights for Putin as they do so. On Wednesday, the Kyiv Independent reported that half of Crimea is now without power due to Ukrainian strikes. Russian authorities in Crimea have not only been forced to ration fuel but to halt all gasoline sales to civilians.
Putin’s end is coming in Crimea. As we and retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges have long argued, Crimea is the decisive terrain of this war. Ukraine does not even have to retake it — it needs only to render it untenable for Russian military use. That day is now fast approaching
The struggle for Crimea will likely culminate in Ukraine finally destroying Putin’s $4 billion Kerch Bridge. Can Putin politically survive the loss of Crimea to Ukraine? We highly doubt it.
Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy. Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as a military intelligence officer and led the U.S. European Command Intelligence Engagement Division from 2012 to 2014. They are the cofounders of INTREP360 and the INTREP360 Intelligence Report on Substack.
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