Carla Conti

I think it is bad.

The recent strikes are increasingly focused on the broader logistics network in Crimea rather than just military assets.

So the Ukrainian drone campaign has struck multiple roads, bridges, depots and fuel tankers and trucks moving through that land corridor between Russia and Crimea.

That has resulted in severe fuel shortages.

Reports that people need to get a QR code from the government app Max in order to be able to buy fuel with long waiting lines.

So it's having an impact as well as really turning away the Russian tourists who go there regularly in the summer.

Well, I think traffic on those routes has dropped.

And I think the strategy is to make those routes unsafe.

not just for military supplies, but fuel supplies and cut off Crimea.

It's a deliberate strategy to isolate the peninsula.

And it's something that Kirill Budanov, Ukraine's head of military intelligence, told me in an interview a couple of years ago that they saw that they had an asymmetric advantage by attacking that land corridor.

And I think now they've been able to do it more systematically because of the growth of Ukrainian drone production and capabilities.

And it is having an impact and forcing Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, to try to dismiss the reports of fuel shortages.

He's blamed it on panic buying.

But, you know, the reports on social media are very real.

It's mostly down to the geography and the fact that it doesn't have...

oil production or refining capacity itself.

So it's quite easy to isolate the peninsula.

Of course, there have been fuel shortages reported across Russia and other regions.

Russia has imposed a gasoline export ban through the summer because of those shortages.