Barricades and trenches have been widely built on beaches and close to key access roads in Crimea as Russian leader, Vladimir Putin fears losing the peninsula he annexed in 2014.
The degree of fear is evident in the plethora of defenses to stop a naval or land attack.
Dragon’s teeth tank traps have been placed on the strategic Ak-Monai next to the Taurida highway by occupying Russians to stop a Ukrainian bid to retake the peninsula that Putin took in 2014.
A TikTok video has been posted showing the wooden planks in the trenches.
Putin has accepted he must decimate the region’s huge tourism industry this summer to hold back against a possible Ukrainian advance as part of an expected counter-offensive in Kiev.
The scale of the operation can be seen in both satellite and ground-level imagery.
Last week, Ukraine said it could negotiate with Russia in Crimea, but only if it continued to the peninsula’s borders, a huge advance from its current positions.
For Putin, the loss would be devastating, perhaps a fatal blow, and is considered unthinkable in Moscow.
Hardline chairman of the international affairs committee of the Russian parliament, Leonid Slutsky, said: ‘The status of Crimea is not in question at all.
‘It is a matter decided after the 2014 referendum and enshrined in the Russian constitution. The peninsula will forever be an inseparable part of Russia.’
He claimed that Kiev had ‘neither the strength nor the means’ to take back Crimea.
Yan Gagin, an adviser to the annexed authorities in the Donetsk People’s Republic, dismissed Ukraine’s hopes of reaching Crimea as ’empty talk that means absolutely nothing’
Yet the defenses indicate that Russia is deeply concerned.There are two land routes to Crimea from Ukraine – now both reinforce.
Putin sees the illegal annexation of Crimea as a holiday jewel in 2014 as one of his greatest successes, but now there is paranoia that Ukraine could use Western weapons to retake an area larger than Wales.
Putin’s puppet leader in Crimea, hardliner Sergey Aksyonov, told Russian state television that ‘thanks to the measures taken on behalf of our president, nothing threatens Crimea.’
‘If you want peace, prepare for war—so we’d better be ready.’
He declined to give ‘all the details’ about the defenses, but boasted that ‘with new fortification lines it was impossible for Ukraine to ever take Crimea – the only real danger is drones.’
