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In a rare admission of its military operations in Crimea, Ukraine has admitted it carried out attacks on a Russian military command post and a military unit in separate strikes on the Russia-occupied peninsula, saying it had inflicted “serious damage” to Russia’s defense system.

Kyiv seeks to reclaim Crimea, which Russia seized and illegally annexed in 2014. It has staged a string of damaging attacks on the peninsula during the war, including on warships, the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, and the bridge that connects the peninsula to southern Russia.

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Nataliya Humenyuk, the spokeswoman of the Defense Forces of Southern Ukraine, said on January 5 that “really powerful combat” operations took place earlier this week, hitting Russia’s military operations in Crimea especially hard.

“Not only one command post was affected,” she said in a rare detailing of Ukrainian operations to repel the full-scale invasion Russia launched in February 2022.

“Now they have the same hysteria with movement again. They are trying to maneuver and position both the defense systems themselves and the objects they protect in other places,” she added in an interview on the show Social Resistance.

It was not possible to verify Humenyuk’s claims.

The attacks on Crimea come after an intensification of Russian missile and drone strikes on Ukraine.

Russian hypersonic and other missile attacks combined with drone strikes blanketed Ukraine on December 29 and again on January 2, killing more than 40 people and injuring dozens more. Ukraine hit back with attacks in southern Russia on December 30. Authorities in the Belgorod region said 25 people were killed.

Air raid sirens rang out three times across the Crimean city of Sevastopol on January 5, though there were no reports of explosions or impacts from drones or missiles.

In the early hours of January 5, the Russian city of Belgorod also was targeted by another round of Ukrainian shelling, officials said, hours after schools in the region were ordered to extend their holiday closures due to the risk of further attacks.

Ukrainian forces were engaged in 59 close-quarters clashes over the past 24 hours, the General Staff of Ukraine’s military said in its daily update on January 5, adding that its troops had repelled multiple Russian attacks in the Donetsk, Kharkiv, and Zaporizhzhya regions.

U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters at the White House on January 4 that recently declassified intelligence found that North Korea has provided Russia with ballistic-missile launchers and several ballistic missiles.

Russian forces fired at least one of those missiles into Ukraine on December 30, and it landed in an open field in the Zaporizhzhya region, Kirby said. Russia also launched multiple North Korean ballistic missiles on January 2 as part of an overnight attack, he added.

Kirby also said Russia is seeking close-range ballistic missiles from Iran. A deal has not been completed, but the United States is concerned that negotiations “are actively advancing.”

With Russia ramping up its missile and drone attacks, Ukraine has been pleading with its Western allies to keep supplying it with air-defense weapons.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on January 3 expressed confidence that Ukraine will continue to receive the international aid it needs.

“Ukraine will always fight with the resources given to it,” Kuleba told CNN. “What is given to Ukraine is not charity. It’s an investment in the protection of NATO and in the protection of the prosperity of the American people.”

The remarks coincided with a warning by the commander of Ukrainian joint forces. Serhiy Nayev, that after the recent massive Russian bombardments, his country will soon struggle to withstand such attacks with its present supply of air-defense ammunition.

U.S. President Joe Biden has proposed a national security spending bill that includes $61 billion in aid for Ukraine, but it has been blocked by Republican lawmakers who insist Biden and his fellow Democrats in Congress address U.S. border security.

With reporting by CNN and AFP