(KYIV, UKRAINE) –Â Ukraine has destroyed nearly 2,000 Russian fuel trucks over the past four days, primarily targeting the main road along the land bridge between Donbas and Crimea, according to Cormac Smith, a former British diplomat.
Crimea is no longer a step too far for Ukrainian forces, Mr Smith told the Frontline programme produced by Times Radio. He stated that the campaign to recapture the peninsula, illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, remains a clear objective.
Mr Smith recalled that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had said the war would end with Crimea. He described the logistics strikes as the second point of a “trident” strategy, alongside the use of intermediate-range drones and longer-range munitions targeting Russia’s oil industry.
The former diplomat noted that a report from the Institute for the Study of War on May 25 suggested the conflict may be turning in Ukraine’s favour. He cited comments from Finnish President Alexander Stubb that Ukrainian forces were killing Russian personnel at a ratio of eight to one on the frontline.
Ukraine’s air defence intercepted 642 out of 729 Russian aerial assets, including ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones, launched in a single overnight attack. However, 30 ballistic missiles struck their targets, causing devastation. At least six people were killed in Dnipro and four in Kyiv, where residential high-rise buildings and business premises were partially destroyed.
Mr Smith said the attacks amounted to war crimes intended to terrorise the civilian population. He argued that the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin was trying to break the will of the Ukrainian people but would fail, drawing a comparison to the Blitz on London which killed more than 23,000 people without breaking British morale.
A close friend of Mr Smith in Kyiv sent him photographs of devastation, saying he was “tired but alive”. The diplomat emphasised that every Ukrainian friend he had lost someone in the war.
He assessed that Ukraine had effectively given up on expecting meaningful support from the Trump administration, believing that Donald Trump acted in Putin’s interest rather than Ukraine’s. He noted that Trump had abandoned any pretence of a peace process and was focused on tensions with Iran.
May 2026 was the first month since 2023 in which Ukraine retook more territory than it lost, Mr Smith said. He added that Russia’s economy was creaking as Ukrainian strikes decimated its oil industry, bringing the war home to the Russian people.
Mr Smith expressed fury over an aluminium refinery in Ireland, owned by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, which exported 80 per cent of its output to Russia during the first quarter of 2026. He said the aluminium was almost certainly used in Russian munitions, including cluster bombs and ballistic missiles, to kill Ukrainian civilians.
The Irish government had accepted Russian assurances that the aluminium would not be used for military purposes, a position Mr Smith called “risible”. He described Irish neutrality as “past its sell-by date” and accused Ireland of hypocrisy, noting the country had prospered through membership of the European Union, privileged access to the United States, and trade with the United Kingdom.
He warned that Ireland was “Europe’s weak underbelly”, with an under-resourced navy and security service, while Russia maintained one of its largest European embassies in Dublin.
Mr Smith pointed to growing criticism of the Kremlin in Russian state-controlled media as evidence that Putin was losing his iron grip. He suggested the Russian dictator’s inner circle posed a greater threat than popular unrest, noting that Putin was appearing in public less frequently and showing increasing paranoia.
He concluded that if Russia stopped fighting there would be no war, but if Ukraine stopped fighting there would be no Ukraine. The existential nature of the conflict meant Ukrainian will would not break.
Be First to Comment