War has arrived in Crimea

Editor’s note (September 26th): The commander of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, whom the Ukrainians claimed to have killed in its raid on Sevastopol, reappeared on September 26th. The article has been amended accordingly.

TWO UKRAINIAN missiles smashed into the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea fleet before noon on September 22nd. This time, there could be no cover-up. After a Ukrainian attack on a nearby command post two days earlier, censors had scrubbed most social-media posts written by locals. But the daytime strike in central Sevastopol, timed to coincide with a meeting of senior generals, was impossible to hush up. Local chatrooms buzzed with gossip. “Day 576 of a three-day war to take Kyiv,” read one. “What about our red lines? Time to wipe these bloody Ukries from the face of the earth,” another. Amid Ukrainian claims that dozens of officers had been killed, Russian authorities even started turning on early-warning air-raid sirens—something they had previously tried to avoid.