Crimea is turned into solid military base: analyst tells what Ukraine needs for siege

Oleh Katkov, editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian Defense Express military news outlet, said this on Espreso TV.

"If we are talking about establishing a remote blockade, we should be talking about hundreds and thousands of weapons. The peninsula has been turned into a solid military base by the Russian forces. Military facilities are right on top of each other - airfields, air bases, naval bases, places of permanent deployment of ground units and marines. It's an astronomical amount of what they've put up since 2014 and what they had there before and what the USSR had there," he said.

Katkov added that Ukraine should be talking about a large number of weapons - drones, long-range missiles.

"There will be a need to block ferry crossings. If the Crimean bridge is completely disabled, in my opinion, they have been ready for this since the first days of the full-scale war. They brought additional large landing ships to Crimea. There are now about ten landing ships in Berdyansk. If the Crimean bridge is destroyed, they can take on the task of transporting the necessary things to maintain their own defence capability. There are systematic cases when strategic important objects are destroyed. The Saki airfield, the largest oil transshipment terminal in Crimea in Sevastopol. It's not about the number of air defence systems, but about the number of targets to be hit," the expert summarised.