Navy spox outlines Ukraine’s legitimate military targets in occupied Crimea

The shipbuilding and repair plants, situated in the temporarily occupied Crimea, which are providing services to the enemy troops and are part of Russia’s military and industrial complex, are viewed as legitimate military targets by Ukraine’s Defense Forces.

The relevant statement was made by Spokesperson for the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Captain 3rd rank Dmytro Pletenchuk in an interview with Ukrinform.

“At least we can speak of the Lyman plant in Kerch, which built and launched a new Karakurt-class missile ship Cyclone,” Pletenchuk told.

In his words, Russians built that ship somewhat clumsily, as usually. For two years, it had been failing cruise missile tests. There were some reports that the missiles had already been loaded, but the ship did not launch them anyways. Now, it has been in service for almost half a year without state tests.

One more ship was also finished but is yet to undergo testing, and another one is near completion.

“Hence, as you can see, production efforts continue there, and they are using our facilities, which appeared to be even more technological than the Russian ones,” Pletenchuk noted.

In Feodosia, there are some other locations, a number of shipbuilding and repair plants.

“All of them are indicated on the map, in Wikipedia, and, of course, the enemy is using them all. Therefore, such enterprises are remaining legitimate targets, as they are the enemy logistics, enemy infrastructure and, in fact, they are part of Russia’s military and industrial complex, and are working for the benefit of the Russian army. All these targets are legitimate for Ukraine,” Pletenchuk stressed.