Funnily enough .... on bridges .... but not that one.
"This is the most important musing to date, so I truly recommend reading it to the end.
The frontline is actually longer than 2000 kilometres, and the parts that are under Ukrainian Offensive are not the most important parts.
Let me explain, and also let me explain my bridge fetish.
The Other Front
An army walks on its stomach.
This is something that the Russians constantly disregard, and it is a large part of their low performance levels.
To feed and equip an army you need logistics, and that almost always involves having trucks and trains crossing rivers, gullys, ravines, etcetera, across bridges.
If the bridge is gone your ability to move goods drop significantly or totally.
Blowing up bridges is the best way to stop a war that is starting, or to win a war.
It is also the best way to shorten a war.
Bridges are also used to move troops between sectors, and it is very educational for the enemy if you can drop the bridge at the moment that the enemy are crossing it.
This means that for Ukraine to win the Offensive against the Russian fortifications they need to weaken or erradicate their supply lines.
You can also often divide your enemy up into bite sized chunks by blowing bridges in between your chunks.
This does though require a huge amount of careful thought since you might need those bridges yourself later on...
So, the hidden frontline is the bridge system in Kherson and Crimea in a broad perspective.
And that frontline has gone spectacularly well for Ukraine lately.
Kersh Bridge + Friends
Everyone seems to have a sexual fetish with dropping this one, and it must drop completely in the end.
But, for now it is not as important, especially since it is heavily damaged and weakened as is.
Let us now imagine that you are a Russian trucker driving goods in your fake adidas tracksuit and flipflops the endless expanses from Rostov na Don to Melitopol while listening to sad lovesongs praising toilet seats and washing machines.
The safest and fastest road is across the Kersh, up via Crimea, then cutting the southeast corner of Kherson and straight up into Melitopol.
Let us for now disregard the bridges inside of Russia that you need to drive over.
Including Kersh there are 27 Bridges to cross as you go to Melitopol.
There are also alternative routes if one is cut, and between the alternatives there are inter-connecting roads.
This mean that there are 97 bridges in total on all of your alternative routes, and not a single way to go if all of the bridges are cut.
You may perhaps be able to cross a few fields, but not the entire way.
As of last night all of them are either completely cut, or damaged and unusable for heavy traffic.
This means that Ukraine has won the Battle of The Bridges in the West.
And, the bridges will remain cut.
Yes, Russia can somewhat use Kersh, but they still can't get anything to Kherson and Zhaporizhzhia this way.
Not even a single nail or can of food.
Nor any ammo.
This has in total cut 70 percent of the logistics into the Southern Military Distric of Ukraine.
Now everyone will go, but Russia can just go the other way.
And yes they can, somewhat.
Eastern Bridge Front
There are two main arteries from Russia into Southern Donetsk Oblast to Mariupol.
The main one runs via Donetsk City, or via the Ring Roads around the City.
It is supplying everything fram Bakhmut to Donetsk City, and used to be the main route into the landbridge to Zhaporizhzhia and Crimea.
Remember that Ukraine pushed forward a few kilometres from Vuhledar towards the H20 main road at the beginning of the Offensive?
This unnoticed offensive gain was the most important to date in the offensive.
It knocked out completely Russias ability to use the Donetsk City main logistics route towards Zhaporizhzhia.
It also put the compimentary supply road going through Mariupol under somewhat firecontrol of Ukraine since it is at the far end of what GMLRS can reach.
Rostov/Taganrog/Mariupol Highway
This is the remaining Frontline for Ukraine to win in the war of starvation.
Right now everything is moving via this final lifeline between Russia and half of the Russian army.
There's just a couple of Bridges on the Ukrainian side, and they are out of reach for everything except Stormshadows, on top of that the bridges are fairly easy to fix and Russia is throwing everything and the cat at repariring these small bridges on the few ocations that they are hit.
This is why it has been the least worked on by the Ukrainians.
It is called a Highway by the Russians, but in the rest of the world it would be called a "country road".
Just look at the google maps image and you will catch what I am getting at here.
The US has an entire music genre for this type of roads... "Take me home, country road".
It meanders through Taganrog City and onwards to the bridge across Lakedemonovka (image).
This puny bridge is now servicing all of Russias needs for Zhaporizhzhia and Kherson.
Theres an even smaller secondary road crossing the Lakedemonovka, and yet another going around crossing the River Mius. Beyond that there are a two 2-ton car bridges across the Mius, but nothing more, the rest of the alternative roads will take you up to Donetsk City.
Wouldn't it be a shame if these bridges all of a sudden dropped into the water?
Problem is that Ukraine lack the means to do it.
All Western weapons given to Ukraine are software locked for any Russian targets.
And the Ukrainian homegrown missiles lack the precission to successfully target the bridges at this distance, and the drones are not powerful enough.
Anyway, I am bugging for permission to strike... and as the cost for my HQ ramps up of us sitting here they will come to see my view in life.
We can safely cheat, we are not in NATO so not breaking any hypothetical deal between NATO and Russia about using missiles against Russian targets inside Russia.
There is currently not a single more valuable military target on the planet than that country road Bridge on the Lakedemonivka. With it down Russia will have to surrender the entire Southern Regions within a matter of weeks.
Heck, they might have to do it anyway...
30 Percent
This is the percentage of what Russia needs to supply their warmachine on the Southern front (Kherson and Zhap) that is currently arriving.
Even a small car crash and this drops to almost zero.
Do not crash here, the Russians will just pull your car down into the ditch and leave you there, no ambulances etcetera allowed to pick up since that hinders traffic flow.
24/7 there are thousands of people along the road waiting to repair, drag away, or fix any problem arriving.
Next to the few small bridges there are repair crews and equipment staged to solve the problem.
The Russian generals are waking up during the night from nightmares screaming "Taganrog!" in terror.
So, the real figure is obviously quite a bit lower since even an empty tank cuts the lifeline.
Best guess is that it is down to 20-25 percent.
Effects
Russia is no longer hauling in food, clothes, etcetera.
They are only hauling in ordinance and ammunition to feed the weapons.
They have even cut transporting in "new" weapons, there is just no capacity.
Fair warning, here it is getting grizzly.
Last week my boys brought me back a Russian captain as a gift, as I sat down to interrogate him I offered him a simple cup of tea.
He broke down in tears, sobbing like a newborn baby.
It was his first cup of tea in a month.
As I gave him a cigarette he was shaking so badly that he could not hold it.
At that point he told us that he had not eaten for more than a week.
So, we tried to feed him, he could not hold down the food, so we put him on emergency IV to keep him alive and rushed him to the nearest hospital.
Officers are heavily priviliged in Russia.
Two days ago a severely weakened Russian soldier swam across the Dniepro.
He collapsed on the beach, and the Ukrainians had to carry him while he frantically begged for food.
It turns out that there was seven of them that started swiming.
There are also evidence that at some Russian trenches that are separated from the general system the Russian soldiers have resorted to eating their newly killed comrades.
This is obviously problematic since it also affects the Ukrainian civilians.
Frontline Results
There are now signs that the Russians are breaking rapidly around Robotyne and Urozhaine with both of them being expected to being completely liberated either today or tomorrow.
Similar results are also seen in other places.
Right now the removal of mines is more the delaying factor compared to beating the weakened Russian forces.
It has also been discovered that behind the frontline breached at Urozhaine/Robotyne the minefields are far less prevalent, it is believed that either Russia ran out of mines, or that the logistics issues hindered them from delivering them.
This will obviously over time increase the pace somewhat.
Kozachi Laheri
Now that it has been made public I can now tell a bit more about what is happening.
700 SBS (Special Boat Service) Operatives was trained by the UK SBS (marine version of the SAS).
They are under the command of legendary "former" Mossad Operative Ari ben Yehuda.
The entire regiment of the SBS have now crossed over into Kozachi Laheri and taken it under control.
This was confirmed by Russian video clips as they left Kozachi Laheri.
As soon as it was taken they quickly started to widen the bridgehead securing more of the river bank to enable heavier equipment to arrive (artillery).
This enabled them to completely cut the last usable road for Russia from Crimea.
The fighting has been reported as being extremely hard.
Yesterday Russia decided to run in reinforcements, and preferably as good ones as possible.
The VDV that was there was judged to be to far away, so they pulled half of the Marines guarding The Castle.
Obviously we noticed as soon as they started to pack up their gear and got ready to drive away.
Equally obviously we could not risk smashing half a battalion next to the Castle.
So, along the road we set up an artillery ambush.
As they reached and started to cross a bridge 12 GLSDBS slamed down on the bridge, and the Russians on the Bridge discovered something mysterious called gravity.
The bulk of the half battalion was then hit with 200 Bonus grenades, half set to airburst, half to contact detonation.
Nothing remained.
During the last 24 hours Ukraine has used GMLRS against units trying to reinforce from Crimea via the Western Landbridge.
Right now it is a mad dash from both sides, Ukraine to push in heavier units via barges and ferries, and from Russia to reinforce and try to push them out into the river.
Problem for Russia is that they gave the Ukrainians 48 hours to wreak havoc before they reacted, and by now it is pretty much to late as long as Ukraine is willing to take high casualty rates during the crossing until they have pushed far enough in.
This time the Ukrainians are willing to take a blood letting a regiment of regular marines are also across with at least some mortar and light howitzers.
Behind them is light mechanized battalion, and behind that is a mechanised armour brigade moving up for ferrying.
I talked to Olexandr and he said that this was unexpected to happen at this precise location, but that it was exactly what Ukraine hoped would happen somewhere in the end in Kherson, and that is why they have performed almost endless amounts of incursion attempts and taking grim losses while doing so.
Yesterday I attended the meeting of Southern Command, and there was noticeable relief in the air, and quite a bit of bloodlust.
Obviously Ukraine not there yet, but now there are very good signs that they are getting to the spot they hoped to be able to achieve the liberation of the Southern Region.
Other units are now moving in across the entire front getting ready, some of them resting after denipplification.
So, in the morning a very sleepy colonel ambled into camp since she is off for the weekend, so I arranged to move my scheduled RnR from Monday to today and grabbed her and choppered in to ******.
She is now happily snoring on my balcony to tired to even take a shower and go to bed.
Thankfully the Russian who used to own the place had left quite passable sun beds for the balcony.
I am having a zip of rum from Guatemala watching the ocean writing this.
Life is good for now, I hope that remains.
We will see!"
www.theguardian.com
