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In an article published last month, this writer applied an American Civil War analogy of 1861-1865 to the current (and seemingly interminable) Russia-Ukraine War, noting that Ukrainian President Zelenskyy seems to be emulating Union Army general William Tecumseh Sherman by making Vladimir Putin and Russian society as a whole “feel the hard hand of war” via drone strikes that have increased in intensity, distance, and accuracy alike.
Now that “hard hand of war” is not only being felt by Russian citizens living within the officially recognized borders of Mother Russia itself, but also by Russia sympathizers within Crimea (which officially remains part of Ukraine, Putin’s petulant protestations to the contrary notwithstanding).
Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF)
Our primary source of information is a 21 July 2026 report in The Guardian (the longstanding UK newspaper) titled “‘No electricity, no water, no fuel’: Ukrainian drone strikes bring darkness to Crimea’s summer,” penned by Russian affairs reporter Pjotr Sauer (presumably no relation to the famous SIG Sauer firearms manufacturer). To wit, Mr. Sauer cites the following sobering facts and figures:
-Crimea is the first Russian-controlled region to experience the acute motor fuel shortages that have since metastasized to Russia proper.
-In desperation, the Kremlin-installed puppet authorities last month declared a state of emergency, temporarily banning sales to private motorists in an effort to preserve supplies for the military and civil defense emergency services (with no end date to the sales moratorium in sight, at least none that can be ascertained from the official public pronouncement from Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-backed head of the peninsula).
-As if the petrol shortages weren’t painful enough for the pro-Putin Crimean residents who aren’t employed in those (comparatively) privileged sectors, Sauer estimates that 70 percent of the embattled region's roughly 2.5 million residents have experienced some form of power outage, whilst many have now gone several consecutive days without electricity or running water.
Impacts of the Attack in the Eyes of Ordinary People
To put a more human face on the effects of Zelenskyy’s drone war against Crimea, Mr. Sauer quotes several individuals, including Marina (no surname provided), the manager of a hostovyy budynok (“guesthouse”) in Yevpatoria, a resort town on the peninsula’s Black Sea coast: “’ For 12 years they [the Russian-installed local officials, that is] told us Crimea was 100% protected. And then, within a month, we’ve been thrown back into the Stone Age – no electricity, no water, no fuel.’”
Sauer also quotes Aleksei (again, no surname provided), a Crimean native who supported Putin’s annexation of the peninsula in 2014 and is now apparently having second thoughts about those previous sentiments: “The authorities kept insisting Crimea was ready for anything. Literally anything. It turns out the authorities failed to prepare for the worst. People are hunting for fuel like it’s The Hunger Games.’”
Marina’s and Aleksei’s statements are lent further credence by a 6 June 2026 article in RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty (RFE/RL) titled “Sun. Sea. Sand. No Gasoline. There’s A Major Problem This Tourist Season In Russian-Occupied Crimea.” In a nutshell, it’s aptly summed up in the piece’s closing paragraph: “Another Crimea resident, Andrei, showed off what he said was ‘a luxury for Crimea’ -- a gas gauge needle indicating a full tank. ‘This is a luxury now. The gas stations are all dry. How can we live? How can we get to work? It's unclear.’"
It brings to mind the infamously long lines for basic consumer goods that characterized the miserable days of the Soviet Union.
An Additional American Civil War Analogy
Besides Gen. Sherman’s March Through Georgia, an additional analogy can be drawn between pro-Russian Crimeans’ wartime woes and another famous (or infamous, if you’re a Southron) Union Army general’s military campaign in the heart of the Confederacy, that being Gen. Philip Henry “Little Phil/Fightin’ Phil” Sheridan’s 1864 Valley Campaign that set out to destroy the fertile Shenandoah—a geographic valley and cultural region of western portion of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the eastern panhandle of present day West (“by God”) Virginia—as a military granary for Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.
Suffice to say “Mission accomplished.” As morbidly described by the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation, Little Phil’s campaign led to “Union depredations and what came to be known as The Burning, a two-week campaign of destruction to neutralize the agricultural base of the Valley – the ‘Breadbasket of the Confederacy.’” Thus was realized Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s directive that “a force should be assembled “to eat out Virginia clear and clean . . . so that crows flying over it for the balance of the season will have to carry their provender with them.”
Whether Zelenskyy’s drone campaign against Crimea and the Russian Motherland will ultimately have the same effect upon Putin and his generals that Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan had against Gen. Lee and Confederate President Jefferson Davis remains to be seen.
About the Author: Christian D. Orr
Christian D. Orr is a Senior Defense Editor. He is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (with a concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He is also the author of the book “Five Decades of a Fabulous Firearm: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Beretta 92 Pistol Series,” the second edition of which was recently published.
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