01 July 2026
Weekly update on the situation in occupied Crimea on July 1, 2026
Main News of the Week
▶ On the night of June 30, the Ukrainian military struck a railway bridge near the village of Ichky in the temporarily occupied Crimea. Russian troops had been using it to transport troops, equipment, and ammunition.
▶ On July 1, the Security Service of Ukraine reported that drones had struck hangars containing the occupiers’ aircrafts five times. According to preliminary data, Su-30 and Su-30SM fighter jets were housed there. A fire broke out in one of the hangars following the strike.
▶ In Kyiv, the SBU detained a former official from Crimea who had collaborated with the Russian occupation authorities after 2014. He helped establish control over key energy facilities on the peninsula, including thermal power plants, gas infrastructure, and oil depots.
▶ Following the strikes in Crimea, there have been disruptions to electricity, water supply, and communications. Some patrol stations and stores are closed, public transportation is operating intermittently, and there are difficulties with withdrawing cash. On June 26, a “regional-level state of emergency” was declared on the peninsula.
▶ Russia added the human rights movement Crimean Solidarity to its list of so-called foreign agents, accusing it of cooperating with international organizations and the Ukrainian authorities.
▶ Seyare Gugurik, the mother of Crimean political prisoners Rustem and Bekir Gugurik, died at the age of 85. She endured persecution by the Russian authorities towards her sons and fought for their release until the very end.
▶ Vladyslav Yesypenko, a journalist from Crimea who had been illegally imprisoned by Russia, was awarded the Order of Merit, Third Class.
Crimes Committed by the Russian Federation
▶ As of July 1, 2026, 316 people in the territory of occupied Crimea are subject to the policy of political persecution, including 169 Crimean Tatars and 1 Karaite.
▶ Irina Levchenko, a journalist from Melitopol who was abducted in 2023, was transported from the Simferopol pretrial detention center to Krasnodar along with other prisoners in an overcrowded prison van. She remains in custody without any officially announced charges. At the same time, the Russian side is attempting to charge her with “terrorism”.
▶ A resident of the Kurmanskyi district, whom the occupying “court” sentenced to 17 years in prison for allegedly donating to the Ukrainian army, may be Ibragim Amitovich Ibragimov, who is being held in Pretrial Detention Center No. 2 in Simferopol.
▶ In Sevastopol, a local woman was sentenced to 16 years in prison on charges of “high treason”. According to the Russian side, she allegedly passed information about Russian military facilities to Ukrainian intelligence.
The use of occupied Crimea as a springboard for attacks on Ukraine and the militarization of the peninsula
Since Russia launched a full-scale invasion and spread its armed aggression throughout Ukraine, occupied Crimea has been used by Russia as a military base for spreading aggression in various forms. From the peninsula, the occupiers continue to launch attacks on the territory of Ukraine, including on civilian infrastructure.
▶ The Ukrainian Air Force reported that during the past week, the occupiers carried out another series of massive combined attacks on Ukrainian territory. In particular, they launched over 900 strike UAVs of the Shahed, Gerbera, and Italmas types, as well as Parody decoy drones, from various directions, including from the territory of occupied Crimea and the Black Sea. The enemy also launched an Iskander-M missile at Ukraine from Crimea.
The resistance movement of Ukrainian citizens in occupied Crimea
▶ On Ukraine’s Constitution Day, Yellow Ribbon activists distributed pro-Ukrainian symbols — including leaflets and ribbons — across the peninsula to remind people once again that Crimea is Ukraine.
▶ The so-called Sevastopol City Court sentenced 45-year-old local resident Olha Tsyryk to 16 years in prison on charges of “high treason”. According to the occupiers’ investigation, in 2023, the woman allegedly photographed and collected data on the locations of Russian Armed Forces units, equipment, and military facilities, as well as naval vessels, and subsequently allegedly passed this information on to Ukrainian intelligence.
The full-scale invasion was marked by a sharp increase in acts of solidarity and resistance by residents of occupied Crimea against the Russian occupiers. Residents of the occupied territories are uniting in resistance movements such as “Yellow Ribbon”, “Zla Mavka”, and “ATESH”, or acting individually.
To suppress the resistance movement of local residents in the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea after February 24, 2022, the occupation administration actively began to persecute and bring Ukrainian citizens to administrative liability under the article on the so-called discreditation of the Russian army.
De-occupation of Crimea is an integral part of ending the war and restoring peace. Ukrainians are doing everything possible to stop the aggressor and protect the entire world from Russia’s criminal actions. Since this is not a local or regional problem, Russia’s aggression poses a threat to the entire world and the international order.