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 the 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.
Suppose Ukrainian brigades can exploit those gaps and liberate the ruins of Mariupol. In that case, 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 are already 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.
This article was originally published on msn.com
Related News:
Police find multiple human remains in Oklahoma river amid search for 4 missing
men
Raleigh shooting rampage shatters quiet
neighborhood's peace
13-year-old boy found shot, killed onpark bench in
West Ridge
U.S. to
provide Ukraine with more weapons as Putinsignals end to unpopular mobilzation
drive
BlowUp Russian Trains, Liberate TheCoast: Ukraine
Has A Plan To Win The War
Ukraine Strikes Back: MultipleExplosions Rock
Russian Border Towns
Dropof blood leads to arrest of N.Y. man accused of killing former in-laws morethan 30 years ago