Ukraine Hits Saky Airbase in Crimea and Penza Plant

For Serbia, which pursues its European perspective in parallel with an energy dependence on Moscow, every new phase of the war in Ukraine is not a distant headline but direct pressure on prices, on the sanctions regime Brussels keeps widening, and on the narrow diplomatic space in which Belgrade maneuvers. Ukraine’s campaign of deep strikes has just entered that new phase: drones of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) hit hangars holding Russian fighter jets at the Saky airbase in occupied Crimea, while other aircraft reached a military plant deep inside Russia that same night.

According to the Ukrainian side, the strike on Saky targeted drone storage and air defense systems, and footage released by the Ukrainian Navy shows smoke rising over a base that has served for years as one of the anchors of Russian air power on the peninsula. Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, remains both a symbolic and a logistical target for Kyiv, and the attacks on its infrastructure, ports, bridges and bases are part of a strategy of strangling the Russian rear rather than breaking through the front.

Why is the Penza strike a turning point?

The bearing plant in Penza, hit overnight into July 1, is no random target. Bearings are a component without which neither aircraft engines nor military instrumentation function, so the strike on that facility fits a pattern in which Kyiv is aiming ever more precisely at the supply chains of Russia’s defense industry, not just fuel depots and refineries. That shifts the war from the front line to production capacity thousands of kilometers away, forcing Russian air defense, whose stockpiles are thinning, to protect a vast territory at once.

For European capitals, this confirms that Ukraine’s drone industry is growing faster than Moscow expected. The EU’s High Representative and leading member states see in it an argument that sanctions pressure and military support are delivering measurable effect, while at the same time it raises the question of Russia’s response, which usually arrives at a civilian cost. Kherson is a reminder of that: a Russian drone struck a passenger minibus, killing two people and wounding nine, in a city that has endured daily shelling for years.

What does this mean for Belgrade?

The new escalation comes just as Russia is also closing its own gates to the West. From July 1, traffic has been suspended on several rail crossings toward Finland, Estonia and Latvia, a move that further seals the economic and transport links between Moscow and northern Europe. Every such tightening reshapes the geopolitical reality in which Serbia tries to keep both its transatlantic and eastern ties without paying a political bill to either side.

Belgrade is announcing no shift for now, but every extension of the war narrows the maneuver: the pressure for Serbia to join the sanctions regime remains open, and the energy calculus grows more sensitive with each strike on Russian infrastructure. Kyiv’s logic of deep strikes is clear, Moscow answers on civilian targets, and Europe measures its own endurance. The question left for the reader is simple and uncomfortable: how many more nights like this can Europe absorb before the war from the east stops being someone else’s news?