Russian authorities suspended train service for Crimea after a Ukrainian drone knocked out a locomotive, further squeezing commerce to the occupied Black Sea peninsula struggling with fuel shortages.The June 8 attack came days after Russian officials ordered new restrictions on commercial and passenger traffic along major highways leading to the region.For weeks, Ukraine's military has ratcheted up a campaign of medium-range drone strikes targeting cargo trucks -- gasoline and fuel trucks, above all -- that supply Crimea.That, plus a broader Ukrainian drone campaign hitting Russian oil refineries, pipelines, and related infrastructure, has led gasoline shortages on the peninsula, whose economy is heavily dependent on Russian tourists.
Ukraine's defense minister has called the middle-strike campaign a "logistics lockdown" for Russian forces.Crimea, which Russia occupied and annexed 12 years ago, is linked directly to mainland Russia via a billion-dollar road-and-rail bridge that spans the Kerch Strait, to the peninsula's east.A ferry also provides access to and from the peninsula, but its capacity is limited.The bridge, known variously as the Kerch Bridge or the Crimea Bridge, was targeted in a Ukrainian truck bomb in 2022, which prompted Russian authorities to order restrictions on truck traffic that remain in place.The route via the Kerch Bridge is substantially longer for Russian tourists to drive, and many instead opt to drive along the 700-kilometer R-280 highway, which runs along the northern shore of the Sea of Azov: from the border with Russia, through Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, to Crimea.On June 6, the Russian-appointed head of Ukraine’s Luhansk region announced restrictions on passenger and commercial traffic along the R-280, as well as another major road that runs through the cities of Luhansk and Donetsk, to the coastal city of Mariupol.That decree followed a similar one issued on May 21 by another Russian-appointed administrator that also restricted truck traffic along the R-280.
