Lieutenant Colonel “Timur” and the elite soldiers of his unit will perhaps one day enter the history of Ukraine for having been, on August 24, the country’s independence day, the first fighters to plant, for the first time in almost ten years, a Ukrainian flag on the soil of Crimea. The memory of their feat of arms, a military action “symbolically very important”Timur believes, will depend on whether or not this territory is reconquered.
The first region of Ukraine annexed by Russia in 2014, Crimea is the symbol of the Ukrainian desire to return to the borders of 1991, the year of the country’s independence. “It all started in Crimea and it will all end in Crimea”Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is wont to repeat to his foreign interlocutors.
While covert operations by Ukraine’s General Directorate of Military Intelligence (GUR) are usually not officially confirmed, Kiev revealed on Independence Day that a special unit had carried out a daring operation in Crimea. “Our troops carried out a landing on the peninsula [criméenne], in cooperation with the naval forces »declared Andriy Yusov, a representative of the GUR.
Doing “combat intelligence”
General Kyrylo Boudanov, head of military intelligence, himself added, a few hours later, on television, that “the importance of the special operation in Crimea is that our people remember that victory, liberation, and the return to normal life are not that far away”. kyiv thus exceptionally confirmed the existence and success of a clandestine operation, because one of its objectives was precisely to strengthen the morale of the Ukrainians.
In an undisclosed location in kyiv, four GUR officers were allowed to discuss the operation “Prodoudjenia sili” (“the awakening of the force”, in reference to the film Star Wars), provided that operational details are not revealed. Lieutenant-Colonel “Timur”, by his nom de guerre, who commanded the operation, Lieutenant “Ivanov”, a specialist in incursions into enemy territory, Colonel “X” and Lieutenant “Y” all participated in the mission which earned them the congratulations of their comrades, and medals awarded by the Ukrainian president.
The four officers serve in one of the GUR’s largest special forces battalions, which they call among themselves the “Timur group”, after its leader. Their primary mission is to make “combat intelligence”that is to say everything which allows “prepare the advance of the armed forces”. The group carries out both operations on the front line, assault or diversion, and operations deep in enemy territory to “destroy command posts of the Russian army”, “eliminate Russian officers involved in attacks against Ukrainian civilians”And “fulfill other missions that we do not have the right to mention”specifies Timur.
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