Ukraine could strike up to seven times more Russian military targets in occupied Crimea if Western funding arrived faster, Commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces (USF) Robert “Magyar” Brovdi told The Associated Press in an interview published on Monday, Aug. 10.
Brovdi said his forces are currently operating at only 14% of the capacity required to conduct the Crimea campaign at full scale.
“Crimea falls within the key conceptual pillars on the path to ending the war,” Brovdi told AP.
Brovdi said Ukraine’s campaign is designed to undermine Crimea’s role as a staging ground for Russian military operations.
Recent strikes have targeted Russian rail bridges, fuel depots, power infrastructure, and air defense systems across the occupied peninsula, disrupting supply lines and creating what Brovdi described as a “window” for Ukrainian drones to operate.
He said Ukrainian forces have destroyed more than 300 Russian air defense assets in recent months, including surface-to-air systems, radar stations, and electronic warfare equipment.
Brovdi claimed that in four recent large-scale Russian missile attacks launched from Crimea, only five missiles were fired in total, which he attributed to the systematic destruction of Russian air defenses. AP said it could not independently verify the claim.
“Creating conditions that make it impossible for any kind of military capability … to remain there will make Crimea uninteresting ... as a military staging ground,” Brovdi said.
Brovdi said Ukraine’s domestic defense industry has the capacity to produce the drones needed for the campaign, but funding from Western partners has not arrived quickly enough.
“It’s the banal problem of untimely financing, which our partners do allocate, but which moves significantly slower than our plans,” he said.
He said the Ukrainian forces have also increasingly used Starlink connectivity and coordinated drone strikes against heavily defended targets, with an average of three drones needed to destroy a target.
Brovdi said Ukrainian forces deliberately select different drone munitions depending on the target, while avoiding civilian infrastructure.
According to him, Russia is expanding electronic warfare capabilities across Crimea in an effort to disrupt Starlink connectivity.
Brovdi also warned that Russia is increasing its use of jet-powered Shahed drones, which he said have become 2.5 times more prevalent in recent weeks.
Russia can currently launch simultaneous salvos of up to 77 ballistic missiles and is planning to increase that figure to 200. Brovdi said Ukraine’s shortage of Patriot interceptors remains one of its most significant vulnerabilities.
Brovdi described Russia’s Wildberries marketplace as a target of Ukraine’s long-range strike campaign, alleging that the company operates a dedicated section supplying goods to the Russian military.
“Wildberries is, first of all, a supply platform – it’s the war’s quartermaster,” Brovdi said.
He said strikes against the retailer are intended not only to disrupt military supply chains but also to make the consequences of Russia’s war more visible to ordinary Russians.
Brovdi declined to provide a timeline for further strikes on Wildberries, saying the campaign would continue “until it becomes impossible for it to recover quickly.”