Ukraine’s drone campaign in Crimea faces a bottleneck that has little to do with production and much more with the speed of funding.
This was stated by Commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces Robert “Magyar” Brovdi in an interview with AP.
Ukraine can increase the intensity of strikes on Russian military facilities in temporarily occupied Crimea sevenfold. This requires faster disbursement of funds that Western partners allocate for drone production. Robert “Madyar” Brovdi, commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces, said this in an interview with AP.
According to him, the main problem is not the capacity of Ukrainian drone manufacturers, but delays in funding. The funds arrive more slowly than required for planning and carrying out combat missions.
The issue is not that the production capacity of Ukrainian manufacturers does not allow us to make the necessary number of drones. It is simply a matter of untimely funding, which our partners allocate but which moves much more slowly than our plans.
– Robert “Madyar” Brovdi
Support for the Crimean campaign stands at 14% of needs
At present, units of the Unmanned Systems Forces are supplied with only 14% of the resources needed to conduct the Crimean campaign at full capacity. According to Robert “Madyar” Brovdi, this is precisely what limits the scale of strikes against targets on the peninsula.
Ukrainian forces are working to ensure that Russia can no longer use Crimea as an important rear-area and military staging ground. The goal is to create conditions under which it will be impossible to maintain and deploy military capabilities there.
Creating conditions that make the presence of any military potential there impossible … will make Crimea unattractive … as a military staging ground.
– Robert “Madyar” Brovdi
Crimea as one of the paths toward ending the war
Robert “Madyar” Brovdi described the recent attacks on facilities in Crimea as the first stage of a campaign aimed at depriving the peninsula of its strategic value to the Russian military. A separate objective is to reduce Crimea’s role as a naval base for Russia.
Crimea is one of the key conceptual directions on the path toward ending the war.
– Robert “Madyar” Brovdi
As part of Operation “Crimean Switch Off,” the Unmanned Systems Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine struck 19 electrical substations in territories temporarily seized by Russia. Of these, 17 substations are located in temporarily occupied Crimea, while another two are in the temporarily occupied territory of Donetsk Oblast.
Increasing the timely flow of funding could significantly expand the scale of this campaign and intensify pressure on Russia’s military infrastructure in the occupied territories.