Ukrainian officers have cautioned that their drive towards the Sea of Azov, a key goal of their counteroffensive, would require a bloody slog by intensive minefields and fortified trenches, doubtless underneath heavy artillery fireplace alongside roads lined with Russian armor and machine weapons. But Kyiv has a extra instant purpose.
That is to penetrate deep sufficient into occupied territory to carry extra Russian army targets inside vary of Ukraine’s regularly increasing arsenal, additional disrupting Moscow’s provide strains and its potential to parry Ukrainian advances.
“The main task we face now, in addition to moving forward, is, of course, to weaken the enemy’s ability to defend itself,” Hanna Malyar, the deputy minister of protection, mentioned on Ukrainian nationwide tv. “And in fact, this is what we are doing now.”
The Ukrainian army claims to be destroying dozens of Russian weapons depots each week whereas continually looking for command posts, air protection techniques and concentrations of troops to hit.
It just isn’t doable to independently assess Ukraine’s success in degrading Russian forces and logistical operations. But this month, Col. Serhii Baranov of the Ukrainian army’s basic employees, claimed that Ukrainian rockets and artillery had been answerable for the overwhelming majority of Russian losses of troopers and tools.
Brig. Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavsky, the commander of Ukraine’s army preventing in Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia, in contrast the counteroffensive to a boxing match, saying that Ukraine intends to strike with longer vary weapons to “hold the opponent at arm’s length” so as to keep away from shut fight.
Last yr, after the United States provided longer-range rocket techniques often called HIMARS to Kyiv, Russia was pressured to maneuver extra of its logistical operations and bases out of the 50-mile vary of the rockets, nearer to the coast of the Sea of Azov.
Before Ukraine launched its counteroffensive two months in the past, its frontline positions had been between 60 and 90 miles from the coast, simply out of the attain of HIMARS, truck-mounted launchers that fireplace satellite-guided rockets.
That signifies that each mile that Ukraine good points in its present assault, the nearer it will get to Russian targets alongside the coast.
Though the HIMARS are cell — the identify stands for High Mobility Artillery Rocket System — Ukrainian forces have a restricted quantity, and like to maintain them a ways from the entrance line. They should first consolidate their good points and present they’ll maintain newly reclaimed territory, typically within the face of Russian aerial and artillery bombardment, so as to considerably change the dynamic on the battlefield, analysts say.
HIMARS and different newly provided Western weapons are way more highly effective than the long-range drones that Ukraine has turned to strike Russian provide routes removed from the entrance. One route runs by Crimea, which Russia has illegally occupied since 2014. The solely land route from Russia to Crimea is the Kerch Bridge, which has come underneath assault twice in the course of the struggle, with Moscow blaming Ukraine every time.
Ukraine has additionally attacked the main roads connecting Crimea to the southern Ukrainian mainland.
Moscow’s different principal provide route runs from western Russia by the occupied territories of jap Ukraine, the place Kyiv’s forces are additionally making an attempt to advance close to the occupied metropolis of Bakhmut.
Source: www.nytimes.com