- Moscow fears that the Ukrainian army may cross the Dnieper and prepares to defend Crimea.

Crimean peninsula. / Google Maps

Russia builds trenches on the Crimean border to defend the peninsula against a possible attack from Ukraine

Russia is fortifying the border of Crimea, the peninsula that it illegally annexed in 2014, and that for the Kremlin is the jewel in the crown of all the occupied territories in Ukraine.

Satellite images taken last week show that Moscow is building trenches around the city of Armiansk, very close to Crimea's territorial border with Kherson province.

In addition, it has rebuilt and expanded the defensive ditches at the Chonhar border crossing, the main crossing point between Crimea and Kherson, as these satellite images show.

I think this thread will surprise you...

Russia is digging new trenches in... Northern Crimea!

1/ pic.twitter.com/1EDabXX5Ib

— Benjamin Pittet (@COUPSURE) November 9, 2022

The fortification of Crimea shows the fears of the Kremlin before an advance of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south of the country. After the Russian army left the western bank of the Dnieper, the Kyiv troops approached only 60 kilometers from the Crimean border and Moscow is fully preparing to defend that peninsula in case the Ukrainian army crosses the Dnieper and advances on the rest of the Kherson region still controlled by Russia.

Russian military commanders also fear that Ukraine could attack the Crimean peninsula with missiles from its new positions in the lower course of the Dnieper.

However, the main river in Ukraine is undoubtedly a brake on the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south and Moscow is not willing to abandon the eastern bank of the Kherson region, the gateway to Crimea.

But if that scenario were to occur, the Kremlin contemplates a new withdrawal of troops towards Crimea, a peninsula that is easy to defend because its land border is an isthmus barely 10 kilometers long that separates the waters of the Black Sea and the Sea of ​​Azov.

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