Russia has already deployed to a Crimean airfield MiG-31 fighters with which it will patrol the Black Sea, despite the risk of being hit by long-range missiles from Ukraine, such as the American ATACMS, that recently hit two Russian air bases in southern and eastern Ukraine.
An open source intelligence (OSINT) analyst, MT Anderson, published on the social network X (former Twitter) satellite images of Planet Labs captured on the 15th in the Russian Belbek air base in Sevastopol, in which he identifies at least four MiG-31s that were not there before.
Three days later, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the start of permanent patrols by Russian aviation equipped with Kinzhal hypersonic missiles in the Black Sea, which will also allow Moscow to control the Mediterranean. The MiG-31s will be equipped with Kinzhal hypersonic missiles, which “have more than 1,000 kilometers range,” according to Putin.
“I think Russia takes a pretty big risk when it redeploys its MiG-31s to Crimea. I think it will be a good target for our unmanned systems and guided cruise missiles,” said the Defense Express analyst. Serguí Zugurets to the Ukrainian television channel Espresso.
Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuri Ignat He stated the day before that Russia uses some 40 airfields in its war in Ukraine and that the fact that it has deployed MiG-31 in Belbek “is nothing new.” He did recall that more than one airfield used by Russia was attacked by Ukrainian forces, and warned that they will continue working to “clean up the Russian filth.”