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Tag: Kerch Bridge

  • Blow Up Russian Trains, Liberate The Coast: Ukraine Has A Plan To Win The War

    Blow Up Russian Trains, Liberate The Coast: Ukraine Has A Plan To Win The War

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    It’s going to take engineers nine months to finish repairs to the Kerch Bridge after Ukrainian forces blew up the strategic span, connecting the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula to Russia proper, on Oct. 7.

    According to AFP, the Kremlin ordered repairs to the $4-billion, 11-mile span to wrap up in July 2023. Until then, Russian forces in southern Ukraine will depend on just one overland supply route—a rail line through eastern Ukraine that’s well within range of Ukrainian artillery.

    All that is to say, the Russian field armies in and around the port of Kherson on Ukraine’s temporarily-occupied Black Sea coast are in trouble. They were struggling with resupply before the Ukrainians blew up the Kerch Bridge, twisting its twin rail lines and dropping one of its two road lanes. Now the struggle will get worse.

    The partial destruction of the Kerch Bridge “presents the Russians with a significant problem,” tweeted Mick Ryan, a retired Australian army general.

    And that sets conditions for what some analysts say is Ukraine’s plan to end the eight-month-old war. As Russian forces fray in the south, gaps could form in their defensive lines stretching from just north of Kherson 250 miles west to the terrain between occupied Mariupol and free Zaporizhzhia.

    If Ukrainian brigades can exploit those gaps and liberate the ruins of Mariupol, they will “sever the Russian armed forces in Ukraine into two pieces that cannot mutually reinforce,” according to Mike Martin, a fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College in London—and almost entirely isolate the Russians in the south.

    After that, “you’re going to see a general collapse of the [Russian armed forces], a change of power in Moscow and a deal that involves Crimea being handed over,” Martin added. “Or, the Ukrainians will just take it.”

    The Russian army traditionally relies on trains to move the bulk of its supplies. That explains why the army never had the big, robust truck units that, say, the U.S. Army takes for granted. The Russians’ truck shortage got a lot worse this spring when the Ukrainians blew up hundreds of trucks trying to resupply Russian battalions rolling toward Kyiv on a doomed mission to capture the Ukrainian government.

    The Kremlin’s problem, now that Ukraine has cut the main rail line into Kherson Oblast, is that the only other rail line connecting Russia to a railhead anywhere near Kherson, terminating in occupied Melitopol, lies just a few miles south of the front line near Volnovakha, north of Mariupol. Ukrainian troops could hit the line, and any trains rolling along it, with 120-millimeter mortars, 155-millimeter howitzers and High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems.

    Realistically, Russian commanders have few options short of surrender. They can feed small quantities of supplies into Kherson by truck, by boat and by plane—and hope that the garrison in the south can hold out until July, when the Kerch Bridge might fully reopen.

    The problem is that Ukrainian commanders know they’ve got nine months to take advantage of Russia’s logistical problem. Nine months to add a third counteroffensive to the counteroffensives they launched in the east and south six weeks ago. That third attack almost certainly will target Mariupol in order to cut in two the Russian army and starve half of it.

    With the Russians on the defensive and the Kremlin’s desperate nationwide mobilization mostly feeding hapless old men into a war they’re not equipped to fight, the momentum clearly lies with the Ukrainians. They get to choose when to launch a third counteroffensive. Russian sources already are anticipating the possible attack.

    It’s likely only the coming winter can dictate terms. The first few months of Ukraine’s winter are wet and muddy. The last few are cold and icy. The former are hostile to ground combat. The latter, somewhat less so. If Kyiv aims to end the war on its terms before, say, January, it might need to make its move soon.

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    David Axe, Forbes Staff

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  • Russian Brigades In Southern Ukraine Depended On One Major Bridge. Now They’re Cut Off From Resupply.

    Russian Brigades In Southern Ukraine Depended On One Major Bridge. Now They’re Cut Off From Resupply.

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    Two days after a powerful explosion rocked the $4-billion rail and road bridge across the Kerch Strait, the narrow waterway separating the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula from the Russian mainland, the Russians are scrambling to re-open the span.

    It’s not hard to see why. The 11-mile-long bridge is the most important overland line of communication between Russia and Russia’s forces in southern Ukraine. There are ways around the bridge, but they’re narrow, slow and vulnerable to Ukrainian attack.

    Which leaves Russia with a choice. Fix the Kerch Bridge fast, or risk its brigades on the southern front—already weakened by months of bombardment—starving on the brittle vine of Russia’s collapsing supply lines.

    The Russian government began work on the Kerch Bridge just a year after its forces annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. The bridge, along with sea and air transport, helped the Russians to build up a powerful garrison in Crimea. A garrison that, back in late February, rolled north as part of Russia’s ever-widening war on Ukraine.

    The bridge with its twin rail lines and two lanes for cars and trucks by far is the most efficient way for heavy equipment and bulk materials to get to Crimea and then north to the occupied Kherson, the locus of Russian control over southern Ukraine south of the free city of Mykolaiv.

    The bridge’s extreme value explains why Ukraine apparently devised some method of striking it from a distance of 175 miles. None of the rockets and ballistic missiles Ukraine has copped to possessing can travel that far. The Ukrainian air force, despite its surprising durability in the face of Russia’s overwhelming aerial advantage, has never struck that deeply behind the front line.

    The massive explosion that struck the bridge on Friday could only have resulted from a powerful bomb. Packed in a truck, perhaps, and remotely triggered by a team of saboteurs. The blast destroyed several civilian vehicles, presumably killing their occupants, and dropped one lane of the two-lane road bridge into the Kerch Strait.

    The attack set ablaze a passing train with tanker cars. The train fire, burning at a temperature of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit or hotter, almost certainly weakened the steel in the bridge’s structure. A further collapse wouldn’t be surprising.

    In any other country, at any other time, authorities would totally shut down the bridge for what could be many months of extensive repairs. But the Kremlin had little choice but to reopen the bridge—or at least look like it was reopening the bridge in order to project strength. Within a day, the Russians were allowing a few vehicles onto the bridge’s surviving lane. Inspection of the damaged rail line was ongoing.

    The Kerch Bridge still stands. But its capacity is a fraction of what it was just two days ago. Ferries have begun shuttling people and cars across the Kerch Strait as thousands of Crimea residents flee the peninsula.

    The dilemma that was apparent on Friday remains unanswered. How does the Kremlin intend to resupply its field armies in and around Kherson? The dilemma grows more urgent by the day as a trio of Ukrainian brigades continues its aggressive counteroffensive in the south.

    The 17th Tank Brigade is rolling toward Kherson’s outskirts from the west. The 128th Mountain Brigade is racing south along the wide Dnipro River east of Kherson while the 35th Marine Brigade attacks east of the Inhulets River north of Kherson.

    The Ukrainian assault already has destroyed or scattered a Russian coastal-defense brigade and driven back a lonely and misplaced Arctic brigade. The Russian 49th Combined Arms Army, the backbone of the Kherson garrison, could be next to fall if the Kremlin can’t push supplies into the area.

    But until the Kerch Bridge reopens, there’s just one way in—via a railway threading from Russia through eastern Ukraine to occupied Melitopol. The problems are myriad. For one, the eastern rail line is close enough to the front near Donetsk that it could come under intensive attack. Secondly, there’s no major direct rail between Melitopol and Kherson.

    To get to the 49th CAA by rail, supplies would need to travel south from Melitopol into Crimea, then back north to Kherson—a slow and inefficient route that adds time and risk. The alternative is to unload the trains in Melitopol, load up trucks and drive the supplies west to Kherson. But the Russians never had enough trucks. And they’ve got even fewer now that the Ukrainians have destroyed hundreds of them.

    As engineers prod the charred remains of the Kerch Bridge, the severity of Russia’s logistical problem is becoming clearer. The Russians’ supply lines into southern Ukraine were fragile before the attack on the Kerch Bridge. They’re even more fragile now.

    It might take a few weeks for the major implications to manifest. The 49th CAA in and around Kherson won’t immediately starve. But it will starve. And when it does, it will retreat, surrender or die in place as Ukrainian brigades close in.

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    David Axe, Forbes Staff

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  • Russian Has One Main Bridge Into Southern Ukraine. Someone Just Blew It Up.

    Russian Has One Main Bridge Into Southern Ukraine. Someone Just Blew It Up.

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    In 2016, a Russian firm began building a bridge from mainland Russia to the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula, which Russian forces had seized from Ukraine two years earlier.

    Starting in 2018, the bridge became the main overland supply line connecting Russia to Russian-held territory in southern Ukraine. Until someone—Ukrainian operatives, apparently—blew up the bridge on Saturday morning.

    The partial destruction of the bridge over the Kerch Strait, east of Crimea, further isolates Russian forces in southern Ukraine at precisely the moment those forces need strong ties to Russia proper. Ukrainian forces in late August launched a counteroffensive in southern Ukraine that in recent weeks has gained momentum, and now threatens to surround significant portions of the Russian garrison in the south.

    This garrison no longer has a bridge to Russia. It now solely relies on ferries and aircraft for resupply.

    The double-span Kerch Bridge—a rail bridge running alongside a road bridge—suddenly exploded early Saturday morning. Videos, shot by motorists, captured both the initial blast and the subsequent blaze. “Sick burn,” the Ukrainian government quipped in a statement.

    It’s not obvious just how the apparent Ukrainian operatives blew up the bridge. It’s possible they sneaked explosives onto a train or truck. It’s also possible they sailed a robotic vessel laden with explosives underneath the bridge.

    The method is beside the point. The Ukrainians months ago proved they were capable of striking deep inside Russian-held territory using helicopters, rockets, artillery, drones and saboteurs. As Ukrainian deep-strike capability expanded, an attack on the Kerch Bridge became inevitable.

    What matters is the effect. Without the Kerch Bridge, the Russian force in southern Ukraine—tens of thousands strong—could begin to starve. Its most reliable lines of communication to Russia now are the railways running into occupied Melitopol. But Melitopol is on the left side of the wide Dnipro River, and Ukrainian forces have blown up almost every bridge across the river.

    All that is to say, there no longer is an easy way for the Russians quickly to move significant supplies or fresh troops into southern Ukraine. Cutting off Russian logistics could have profound consequences for Ukraine’s effort, eight months into Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, to liberate Russian-held territory and push back Russian forces all the way to pre-2014 borders.

    Most immediately, the destruction of the Kerch Bridge could weaken the Russian garrison in and around occupied Kherson. Ukrainian brigades already were marching toward Kherson. Now they should be able to march faster, against increasingly fragile Russian formations.

    Longer term, dropping the Kerch Bridge creates favorable conditions for a possible Ukrainian counteroffensive toward the port of Mariupol, which the Russians first destroyed then captured this summer. If Ukrainian forces can liberate Mariupol, they would sever overland links between Russian forces in eastern Ukraine and Russian forces in southern Ukraine.

    Severing the two contingents deprives both of the flexibility they need to reinforce each other. They’re stuck in place as Ukrainian brigade maneuver around them.

    In apparently blowing up the Kerch Bridge, the Ukrainians significantly have boosted their odds of liberating broad swathes of Russian-occupied Ukraine.

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    David Axe, Forbes Staff

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