Right after Kherson city was liberated and spans on the Antonivsky and Nova Kakhkovka bridges blown, a whole lot of commenters went “Well, Ukraine obviously isn’t going to try to cross the Dnipro there, it’s too wide.”
The Kinburn Spit is a narrow finger of sand and scrub, barely three miles long, that juts from the wider Kinburn Peninsula into the Black Sea at the mouth of the Dnipro River south of Kherson. It and the adjacent peninsula also are the last parts of Ukraine’s Mykolaiv Oblast that remain under Russian occupation.
Don’t expect that to last. The Kremlin on Wednesday ordered its battered forces on the right bank of the Dnipro to retreat to the river’s opposite bank.
The order came six months after Ukrainian brigades, re-armed with European howitzers and American rocket-launchers, began bombarding Russian supply lines in the south—and two months after those same brigades launched a counteroffensive aimed at liberating Mykolaiv and Kherson Oblasts.
The Ukrainians have the Kinburn Spit in their sights. They’ve got the troops, the equipment … and a plan.
Russian troops seized the Kinburn Spit in mid-June as Russian advances in the south—having already overwhelmed Kherson city—ran into stiff resistance a few miles south of Mykolaiv city. Capturing the spit would turn out to be one of the Russian army’s last victories in the south. The four-month Ukrainian counterlogistics campaign that preceded Ukraine’s southern counteroffensive already was underway.
Kinburn matters. Russian control of the sandy strip “will allow them to exert further control of the Black Sea coast,” the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C. explained in June. For the Ukrainians, Kinburn is a back door—a way to get forces onto the left bank of the Dnipro without crossing the river, likely while under fire.
As far back as April, U.K. intelligence agents were advising their government to support Ukrainian forces in any future attempt to “conduct beach reconnaissance” on the Kinburn Spit. The recon could “Identify good landing locations for a larger assault force for a future counterattack,” the agents explained in a presentation that later leaked to the press.
It’s possible Ukrainian special operations forces riding in rigid-hull inflatable boats began reconnoitering the spit as early as September. In October, video circulated online reportedly depicting the Ukrainian navy’s last remaining big ship, the 240-foot amphibious vessel Yuri Olefirenko, apparently firing rockets at Russian forces on or near the spit.
The Ukrainian military’s southern command on Saturday announced its intention to liberate Kinburn. Within a day, there were videos online possibly depicting Ukrainian commandos riding toward the spit in their small boats.
Here’s a video of Ukrainian forces doing just that:
Looks more like a commando raid or a reconnaissance in force. And here’s a video analyzing Russia defensive position on the Spit:
There are unconfirmed reports of other river crossing zones. I’d take those with several grains of salt. But it seems possible. Indeed, there are reports confirming that Russia has indeed bugged out from towns in Kherson south of the Dnipro, like this video of apparently abandoned posts in Oleshky, directly south of the Antonovsky Bridge:
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry has evidently confirmed Russia’s pullout from the banks of the Dnipro as well:
Russia is preparing defensive positions in Crimea:
Three areas they’ve prepared defensive lines are on the isthmus just south of Perekop, just south of the Chongar Strait, and even on the Arabat Spit, that tiny bit we talked about having a tiny dirt road here. Says Suchomimus: “It’s a bit of preparedness and foresight we haven’t seen from them so far.”
Peter Zeihan thinks that Crimea is so hard to supply that Russia would be better off abandoning it:
I suspect Putin would rather die that give up Crimea voluntarily.
Pooty Poot certainly knows how to make friends and influence people…
Update: Current thinking seems to be that the Polish missile strike was a Ukrainian ground to air missile that went astray trying to intercept a Russian missile.
Lets look at the news that Russia has announced a complete withdrawal from Kherson oblast north/west of the Dnipro River.
First up: A big picture overview from Peter Zeihan, that I have some minor to moderate quibbles with.
Takeaways:
Russia has announced withdrawing from the Kherson pocket, which is their only territory west of the Dnipro River.
“Reports at this point indicate that the Russians are withdrawing at full speed from all positions.”
Not a rout…yet.
“Based on whose statistics you’re looking at, they’re somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 Russian forces in the area, but it’s generally accepted on both sides these are the best troops that the Russians have, with the best training and the best equipment.”
Those Russians haven’t been properly supplied for a month due to the Kerch Strait Bridge attack. “Which is the only heavy rail connection that can handle freight transport from Russia proper to the southern front.”
“Everything now has to come in by truck and the Russians have lost the vast majority of their tactical truck support fleet for the military and are now using civilian vehicles, making them very vulnerable.”
“Not enough shells and not enough fuel have been getting to the Kherson front.”
One result: For the last two weeks, Ukrainian artillery has received zero counter-battery fire. “So the Ukrainians have just been able to plug away with whatever ammo they have.”
“The Ukrainians are being presented with a golden opportunity even if it’s only 20,000 Russian troops that are here. They’re now all in a state of retreat and they all have to go to the same places.”
“There are only two bridges across the [Dnipro] river, and the Ukrainians have excellent intelligence on the entire zone, so if the Russians put up a pontoon bridge it usually only lasts for a few minutes before it gets taken out.” I rather strongly suspect that Zeihan is either exaggerating here, or the sources he’s depending on are. It’s a bit too far front the frontlines for easy Excalibur range, and I sincerely doubt Ukrainian observers can get approval for HIMARS strikes within minutes for targets of opportunity. They’re just too expensive, and it’s not like they have huge quantities on hand.
“All of the Russians need to go on the same roads and the same intersections, which are all going to be massive kill zones until they reach the bridgeheads, one of which is at Kherson city, and the other one which is at the dam at Nova Kakhkovka.”
“The Ukrainians have been hitting these bridges with rocket fire for weeks, and they can’t handle heavy equipment any more.” Here Zeihan’s information is out of date; Russia has successfully repaired the bridge at Nova Kakhkovka using aggregate fill, which means it probably can be used for Russian heavy equipment to escape. See the video below for more details.
“Which means the Russians are going to have to make a massive parking jam at the bridgehead, dismount, and then run across while under artillery fire the entire time. The casualties are going to be immense, and that’s the best case scenario.”
“Best guess is that not only are the Russians going to be leaving behind their best gear, but they’re leaving behind more gear than what Ukrainians captured from the Russians in the Izyum assault back in September.” In this I also think Zeihan is overly optimistic. Russia has fought this war very stupidly for the first six months, and the disordered flight from Izyum, leaving so much equipment behind, should never have happened with a competent plan for a fighting retreat. By contrast, all the evidence we have from Kherson (again, see the video below) suggests that Russia is planning a fairly competent and orderly retreat, especially with the ability to use the Nova Kakhkovka bridge. Will Russia leave a lot of good kit behind in Kherson? Probably. Will they leave more behind than Izyum? For that I’m very skeptical. Then again, the Russian military has constantly surprised me with the depths of their incompetence over the past eight months…
“The Ukrainians are likely to enter the war by May with a tank and artillery force that’s more than five times its strength on the first day of the war.” For tanks, I think this figure is greatly exaggerated. According to Oryx, Ukraine has captured 503 tanks total, and they had more than that in active service. For artillery, though still unlikely, it seems a bit more plausible, as Ukraine started with less and Russia has tons and tons of towed artillery, which is exactly the sort of thing that’s going to get left behind in a hasty retreat.
“The Russians have already used the majority of their missile and tank forces, which began this war as the world’s largest.” That, I think, is accurate. Russia has been expending smart ordinance at a furious rate, and with sanctions, it doesn’t have the technological base to easily replace them.
“The Kherson withdrawal, and the likely rout to come, does mark the end of any hope the Russians had of regaining any sort of strategic initiative, or any sort of meaningful offensive operations, until at least to May. It’ll take them at least that long to bring in fresh troops and fresh gear.”
“In that time, the Ukrainians are not going to sit on their hands. They don’t have to cross the river to strike at the Russians. Once they get to the river, the long-range rockets and artillery are going to be able to target the isthmus, which is only about three kilometers wide, that connects the Ukrainian mainland to the Crimean peninsula.” On the Deep State map, I get closer to 9km just south of Perekop. Plus the Chongar strait bridge, which will be in HIMARS range. Plus the rail bridge just south of Syvash. Plus the little road southwest of Vasylivka crossing, which looks too small and precarious to support heavy traffic. Ditto the long, skinny road that runs down the Arabat Spit that separates the Sea of Azov from the Syvash Lake (AKA Rotten Lake), which appears to be a literal dirt road more suitable for dirt biking that main battle tanks. (Actually, there appear to be several weird little dyke-top roads that separate different segments of the Syvash Lake, though none really look up to military duty.)
“Because the Kerch rail bridge is out, Russia cannot only not bring in ammo and troops and fuel, it can’t bring in food. Their only other option are some very light rail and road connections across that isthmus, coming from the rest of occupied Ukraine, all of which Ukraine will still be able to strike.”
“In capturing Kherson, the Ukrainians are going to be able to cut the water flows to the Crimea canal, and water from that canal is solely responsible for three-quarters of the food grown in Crimea. So no imported food, little grown food. Russia is either going to have to evacuate the entire peninsula by car across the Kerch bridge’s remaining road span, or suffer a 1980s Ethiopia style famine.” Here again I think Zeihan exaggerates, as Russia will still be able to bring in food via ship across the Black Sea or the Sea of Azov. Crimeans could well be looking at a very lean year, maybe even Siege of Saint Petersburg lean, but that’s not “Ethiopians dropping dead of famine” lean.
Next up: Suchomimus offers a detailed map update. Zeihan is a geopolitical generalist jack of all trades, but detailed video and geolocation analysis is all Suchomimus does.
Takeaways:
Russia has blown up most (probably all) of the bridges over the Inhulets River.
Russia has several ferries to run troops and equipment over the Dnipro, along with rallying point to stage units for withdrawal. Some of the staging areas have been hit by Ukrainian artillery, but satellite photos show Russian forces spread out in those areas to minimize damage.
No evidence of heavy vehicles using those ferries yet. “It’s unknown if these ferries and barges can actually support anything heavier or not, and if they can, it’s likely they can only carry one at a time.”
There are two ferry loading points in Kherson city itself.
The southern bank shows several unloading spots. “This shows the ferry unloading spots, as well as a number of defensive positions trenches and earth walls which have been constructed. This point is reported to be less used than it was because of numerous calls from Mr. HIMARS. But it’s still heavily defended with trenches.”
As mentioned above, Russia has repaired the Nova Kakhkovka bridge over the Dnipro River using fill materials. “The main bridge is fully repaired, and there are three smaller and lighter bridges, so this is the only real crossing point…there’s no way to move heavy vehicles other than the ferries, and we’ve only seen light trucks on those so far on the Eastern side. Nova Kakhkovka is the only real option, so they are in a bit of a pickle, at least when it comes to getting heavy vehicles back across.”
“I expect the priority will be holding Nova Kakhkovka for as long as possible.”
Russia has constructed no less than three successive prepared defensive lines on the south/east side of the Dnipro.
Finally, after a month of almost no significant Kherson updates, are we seeing frontline movement indicating a Russian withdrawal? Oh yeah. Here’s Kherson at 4:04 AM Ukrainian time today:
The rail bridge has two tracks going each way, and they ran a test 15-car train on the other span. I have a civil engineer/bridge inspector friend who thinks it’s probably unwise to use the rail bridge at all, as the fire has almost certainly weakened the structure through spalling. But Russia doesn’t have a lot of options.
The destroyed train hasn’t been cleared yet.
They’ve opened up the surviving lane for traffic. “It’s been said that the road span can handle 20 cars an hour and has a weight capacity of 3.5 tons.” That’s rural mail route capacity, not “support a major front in a war” capacity.
Russia is trying to repair the bridge.
They’re using passenger-only ferries to cross, but the run rate is so low they may only have one ferry in service.
Peter Zeihan says it’s potentially a turning point in the war:
“By far the most significant development of the war to date.” I would say that the failure to take Hostomel Airport in the opening phases of the war was bigger, as that meant Russia’s high risk/high reward decapitation strike had failed.
“The Kerch bridge is the only large-scale rail connection between mainland Russia and the Crimean peninsula, which is home to about two and a half million people.”
All other rail lines are under threat of Ukrainian artillery.
He reiterates that everything in Russia runs on rail, as they never built a modern road network in most of the country.
“With Kerch being the only real connection, it is the primary primary way that the Russians Supply Crimea in the southwestern front with not just troops and equipment, but with food and fuel.”
He estimates the bridge spans couldn’t be repaired without several months of work.
“Now that the Ukrainians know it can be done, you can bet they’re going to try to hit other parts of it to make sure the thing stays offline.”
“For the first time we have a path forward for the Ukrainians here to win that is not long and windy.”
Russia finally has a problem it can’t just shove bodies at. “You don’t throw a half a million people at logistics. This is something where either you have the connections or you don’t.”
Russian troops in Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea are “suddenly on their own.”
They can now only supply those regions in two ways. “One is by truck, and we know that because of all the Javelins that have been put into Ukraine, and all the RPGs, that the Russians are almost out of their entire military tactical truck fleet, and they’ve started using city buses and Scooby-Doo vans, and those just can’t take the volume of stuff that an active frontline needs.”
The second way is by ship, and if they can’t supply anti-ship missiles, then Ukrainians can Muscova “every single cargo ship that the Russians try to bring in.”
“Losing cargo ships in that volume, losing trucks and buses in that volume, is hollowing out the entirety of the Russian internal transport system. This is the sort of thing that if you bleed this fast, it takes a decade to recover from, and in a war zone that is not going to happen.”
And sanctions make everything harder.
There still seems to be some confusion over just what blew up the bridge. While truck bomb is still the most widely accepted theory, supposedly Russia scans all trucks before the enter the bridge. And Suchomimus has a video up showing something in the water just before the blast (what isn’t clear).
Finally, there are persistent reports of arrests of military personnel in Moscow. But the primary source for these reports seems to be Ukrainian, so several grains of salt are probably in order.
A massive fire is burning on the Kirch Strait Bridge that connects Russia to Crimea Saturday morning, with images showing multiple train cars fully engulfed and two spans of the road bridge in the water.
Traffic on the bridge, a critical strategic artery for Russian forces in Crimea amid its war in Ukraine, has reportedly been halted as heavy flames and black smoke spew from a train carrying unknown cargo. Photos also show spans of both east and westbound lanes have collapsed into the water near the burning train.
Those collapsed spans are potentially a huge blow to Russia’s entire war effort, as they were already having difficulties keeping all of their field units adequately supplied. With the Kerch Strait Bridge out of commission, the job of resupplying the southern front goes from being difficult to being an absolute nightmare, and makes Melitopol even more vital to keeping troops on the southern flank supplied.
The bridge cost billions to build after Russia seized Crimea in 2014 and has been one of Ukraine’s top targets, although it lacked traditional weaponry capable of striking it from far away. Even the Pentagon has openly stated that it sees the bridge as a viable target for Ukrainian forces. Russia has deployed air defenses and decoy barges in an attempt to protect it from some kind of attack in recent months.
It’s hard for even a competent military to have effective air defense all along possible logistics routes, and Russia has been far from a competent military in this war.
Suchomimus is on it:
He maps it as too far for HIMARS, and thinks it was likely a drone attack.
Russia has a 30,000 man strong rail organization. If it hasn’t suffered the same rot as the rest of the Russian armed forces (a big if), and if they can scrounge up the proper equipment (such as a crane barge; another big if), it could conceivably have the bridge repaired and usable again, possibly in as little as two to four weeks. It’s not easy, but it’s doable, and I imagine this is going to automatically jump to the top priority on the Russian logistics list. And, unlike the Antonovsky Bridge, it’s not currently in HIMARS range.
But given the gross incompetence Russia’s military has shown in so many areas, it’s no sure bet that it can be repaired that quickly (or even at all) with assets in or near the theater.
The clock is ticking…
Update: Now reading that it was a truck bomb that took it out, timed to hit a passing fuel train, and that certainly seems plausible from fiercely the train was burning.
Russia acknowledges defeat in Kharkiv, ultranationalists start to turn on Putin, Lyman is the new battleground, and unconfirmed reports of Russian troops abandoning Melitopol.
The Kremlin has recognized its defeat in Kharkiv Oblast, the first defeat Russia has acknowledged in this war. The Kremlin is deflecting blame from Russian President Vladimir Putin and attributing it instead to his military advisors.
The Kremlin is likely seeking to use the defeat in Kharkiv to facilitate crypto mobilization efforts by intensifying patriotic rhetoric and discussions about fuller mobilization while revisiting a Russian State Duma bill allowing the military to send call-ups for the regular semiannual conscription by mail. Nothing in the Duma bill suggests that Putin is preparing to order general mobilization, and it is far from clear that he could do so quickly in any case.
The successful Ukrainian counter-offensive around Kharkiv Oblast is prompting Russian servicemen, occupation authorities, and milbloggers to panic.
Russia’s military failures in Ukraine are likely continuing to weaken Russia’s leverage in the former Soviet Union as Russia appears unwilling to enforce a violated ceasefire it brokered between Armenia and Azerbaijan or to allow Armenia to invoke provisions of the Russia-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization in its defense.
Ukrainian troops likely continued ground attacks along the Lyman-Yampil-Bilohorivka line in northern Donetsk Oblast and may be conducting limited ground attacks across the Oskil River in Kharkiv Oblast.
Russian and Ukrainian sources indicated that Ukrainian forces are continuing ground maneuvers in three areas of Kherson Oblast as part of the ongoing southern counter-offensive.
Russian troops made incremental gains south of Bakhmut and continued ground attacks throughout Donetsk Oblast.
Ukrainian forces provided the first visual evidence of Russian forces using an Iranian-made drone in Ukraine on September 13.
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Zelenskiy, said Ukrainian troops were now trying to retake the Russian-held town of Lyman in Ukraine’s Donetsk region and were eyeing territorial gains in the neighbouring Luhansk region which is under Russian control.
“There is now an assault on Lyman,” Arestovych said in a video posted on YouTube.
“And that is what they fear most – that we take Lyman and then advance on Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk,” he said, referring to twin cities in the Luhansk region taken by Russia after fierce fighting in June and July.
The Ukrainian mayor of Melitopol said that Russians are evacuating Melitopol, the Zaporizhia Oblast city between Mariupol and Kherson, and heading to Crimea. I treat this report with a fair amount of skepticism, because if true it would essentially mean Game Over for Russia’s southern front.
I'm hearing more & more reports that Russians are evacing Melitopol. This remains UNCONFIRMED. If true, Ukr can reach the Black Sea, blow the Kerch bridge, & utterly destroy every Russia military unit in southern Ukraine and Crimea. And THAT would be a nation-ending event. pic.twitter.com/8cCDnDEbVl
DEEP STRIKE: Major explosions rocked the RU air station at Taganrog, followed by a number of secondaries & fires. Russian AWACs, including the including the newest A-100 platforms, are forward deployed at Taganrog. This strike will negatively affect RU air defense in the region. pic.twitter.com/iKPeaIW5w8
In the newly-liberated areas, relief and sorrow are intertwined – as accounts emerge of torture and killings during the long months of Russian occupation.
Artem, who lives in the city of Balakliya in the Kharkiv region, told the BBC he was held by Russians for more than 40 days, and was tortured with electrocution.
Balakliya was liberated on 8 September after being occupied for more than six months. The epicentre of the brutality was the city’s police station, which Russian forces used as their headquarters.
Artem said he could hear screams of pain and terror coming from other cells.
The occupiers made sure the cries could be heard, he said, by turning off the building’s noisy ventilation system.
“They turned it off so everyone could hear how people scream when they are shocked with electricity,” he told us. “They did this to some of the prisoners every other day… They even did this to the women”.
And they did it to Artem, though in his case only once.
“They made me hold two wires,” he said.
“There was an electric generator. The faster it went, the higher the voltage. They said, ‘if you let it go, you are finished’. Then they started asking questions. They said I was lying, and they started spinning it even more and the voltage increased.”
Artem told us he was detained because the Russians found a picture of his brother, a soldier, in uniform. Another man from Balakliya was held for 25 days because he had the Ukrainian flag, Artem said.
A school principal called Tatiana told us she was held in the police station for three days and also heard screams from other cells.
The disaster in Kharkiv is so massive and apparent that even some of the pro-war Russian pundits are realizing it.
Life comes at you fast: pundits on Russian TV realize that their military is failing and their country is in trouble. They are starting to play the blame game. Some of them finally understand that their genocidal denial of the Ukrainian identity isn't working in Russia's favor. pic.twitter.com/jNNn5xifI5
For Putin, losing ultranationalists is much more dangerous than criticism from more liberal segments of Russian society.
Their criticism is that Putin is not doing enough. That the special military operation is insufficient, and that Putin should declare full mobilization. These ultranationalists are largely represented by those Russian military bloggers that have become quite famous during the war. The most famous one is probably Igor Girkin. These bloggers make sometimes very good military analyses, and they clearly have a network of sources that provide information about the situation on the frontlines. And we also know that their views are shared by many of the soldiers. For example, there have been studies that show that these ultranationalist views are pretty common in spetsnaz units. And these ultranationalist voices are a real challenge for the Putin regime. Because obviously he can’t dismiss them as being unpatriotic or foreign agents or something like that. And what is happening now is that these ultranationalists are turning against Putin. And that is dangerous for him.
The shift has been from “If you support the troops, you have to support Putin” to “If you support the troops, you have to blame Putin for fucking things up so badly.”
Ben Hedges: Ukraine will retake all pre-February 23rd territory this year, and recapture Crimea next year. “It could be quicker.”
More scenes of captured equipment in Izyum.
Ukrainians issued Russian passports find out they’re worthless to get into Crimea or obtain government services.
Ukrainian troops using the Polish-built Krab self-propelled howitzer say it’s like night and day compared to their old Soviet equipment. “It’s like a Porsche vs. a Lada.”
Russian politician Dmitry Medvedev reacts well to suggestion the West give Ukraine security guarantees. “The land will be on fire and the concrete will melt.”
For those who think I rely too much on Ukraine updates and Peter Zeihan videos, enjoy this Peter Zeihan video update on Ukraine!
Takeaways:
“Everything that the Russians were bad at before (propaganda, logistics, precision, training, maintenance, equipment), everything they were bad at before, they’re worse at now.”
Ukraine has moved from trying to stop the Russian advance with shoulder-mounted weaponry to longer-range heavy artillery, allowing them to hit ammo dumps, logistical hubs and high-value officers.
“The degree to which the Ukrainians are able to put targeting information, either from their own human network or signal intelligence that is provided by the Americans, and put it to use has been very impressive, and it has snarled the entirety of the Russian advance in both the east and the south.”
“Russia may be running out of ammunition.”
Russian doctrine calls for slow advances prepared by massive artillery barrages.
“They faced a massive industrial collapse in the 1990s that they never really covered recovered from.”
They have fought three artillery intensive wars since the Soviet collapse: two in Chechnya and then one in Syria. So now the Russians are attempting to advance over a front that’s a thousand miles long with a burn rate for their artillery in excess of 40,000 shells a day. Going through a relatively small by Soviet standards arsenal that has been acquired since the Soviet collapse, when the industrial system collapses. Well, any equipment any shells that they’re going to use that are not from that stack are things that were built before 1989, meaning that they’re in excess of 30 years old. We’ve seen reports several a year in Russia going back 30 years that, every once in a while, one of these shells [just] cooks off and the entire ammo dump goes up. It’s entirely possible that some of the explosions were seeing in places like Belograd or Western Russia are not actually being caused by the Ukrainians, but by the Russians manhandling of their own equipment. But regardless, that burn rate 40,000 a day is not something that anyone could maintain at length.
Thus Russia has been shooting at big static targets like train stations and malls. “They have the feel of being a little bit more than the Russians shooting at things to demonstrate to the world that the Russians can still shoot at things. Tanks and infantry are not following up on any of these attacks.”
“Kherson was the only major city that Ukrainians ever lost to the Russians, the only regional capital.”
“All the normal things that plague offensives are appropriate to think about here. They trigger higher casualties among the attackers than the defenders. They require more troops, They require better logistics. They’re more vulnerable to disruption. All of that stands. Also, you have to consider that this isn’t simply Ukraine’s first significant offensive in the war, but this is Ukraine’s first significant offensive ever.”
“The Ukrainians have continually surprised to the upside, and the Russians have continually surprised at the downside. So what should have been a wildly unbalanced war that should have been over four months ago all of a sudden, if not a conflict among equals, is suddenly looking like a little bit more of a fair-ish fight.”
Summary of the Kherson situation so far, including damage to the bridges, covered here and here.
No guarantee that the Ukrainians will win in Kherson, but it obviously offers them the best chance.
“If it proves that the Ukrainians are successful [Russian] forces are going to have to evacuate on foot, they are going to have to leave all of their gear behind…this would be the single biggest military transfer to Ukraine of the post-war environment, and certainly of this war…all of a sudden, the Ukrainians might actually have what they need.” Sometimes Zeihan has a tendency to overstate things, and I think he does that here. Yes, they’ll probably capture some usable heavy equipment, but the estimates I hear are some 20,000 Russian troops in Kherson, and I’m not sure how many functional military vehicles will be left in usable condition after such heavy fighting. They might well pick up significant quantities of towed artillery.
He talks about the importance of taking Nova Kakhkovka, and controlling the irrigation gates for the canals that feed occupied Crimea.
If Ukraine retakes Kherson, they might theoretically be able to take out the Kerch Strait Bridge. (Note that this is only true if they actually have the ATACMS missiles for their HIMARS that the Biden Administration says we haven’t given them yet, as I calculate a distance of roughly 179 miles from Nova Kakhkovka to the bridge.) “Crimea goes from being an incredibly strategically valuable platform that the Russians can use to launch into Ukraine proper, into the most significant military vulnerability that post-war Russia has ever had.” Eh, I think I have to go with the Atomic Bomb between 1945 and August of 1949.
“If Ukraine is going to win this war, this is how it’s going to start.”
Previous stories on Ukraine hitting Russian military bases in Crimea have focused on the possibility of long-range missile strikes. As those strikes have continued, it’s now proven that some have been carried out by drone, and others appear to be the work of Ukrainian special forces or resistance fighters hitting the Russian deep behind the front lines.
None of these is good news for Russia.
Ukraine used a drone to hit the headquarters of the Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol:
Some takeaways:
It was a hit, not a drone shoot-down.
“The new Black Sea commander was there. There are some reports saying it’s his first day in office. So, welcome to the new job, Chuck.”
The author thinks that a number of Ukrainian special forces might be operating drone from a point inside Crimea.
He says another possibility is it’s controlled via repeaters across the Black Sea, but I don’t see why you couldn’t also control it via satlink from orbit.
Ukrainian forces also hit the nearby Belbek Airbase:
More targeted Russian military infrastructure:
The Ukrainians are hitting Russian facilities hard today
• Explosion at munitions depot, Timonovo, Belgorod • Explosion at Stary Oskol Airfield, Belgorod • Explosions in Nova Kakhovka, Kherson • Explosions at Belbek airport, Crimea • Air defence active near Kerch, Crimea pic.twitter.com/kzNleiN2rU
— Louis 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 〓〓 💙 Defend the right to vote (@LouisHenwood) August 18, 2022
Those attacks at Timonovo and Stary Oskol Airfield happened in Russia proper, not occupied Ukraine.
HOLY HIMARS WHAT IS GOING ON? Belgorod local telegram channels report a new explosion at the airfield in Stary Oskol. More than 150 km from front line. Presumably the video below is from there –#Ukraine#Russiapic.twitter.com/35xQAZrpK7
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) August 18, 2022
The Wall Street Journal has a Crimea 101 explainer up:
Russia used Crimea as a huge staging area for the southern part of the invasion.
Right now Ukraine is seeking to degrade Russian forces rather than battle them directly. “A thousand stings from a bee.”
Airfield strikes have forced Russia to move planes out of Crimea.
Despite air superiority, Russia clearly doesn’t have the manpower, organization and equipment to protect their rear echelon from ongoing supply and infrastructure attacks. This exacerbates Russia’s well-documented logistics problems, especially given the Russian doctrinal preference for smaller numbers of support personnel maintaining fewer, larger supply depots.
All that would tend to argue against Russia gaining much further territory in what remains of the summer.
Looks like more Russian bases in Crimea are blowing up despite being hundreds of miles from the front lines.
First up: France 24 reports explosions on a base in NE Crimea:
Caveat: The video map calls the location Mayskoye, which isn’t in Crimea, but across the Kerch strait in Russia proper. Later, they show a tweet with the location as Dzhankoi, which matches up with the location shown on the map.
More video, where you can see subsequent munitions explosions, and which says that Mayskoye is 14 miles from Dzhankoi:
I assume that the Crimean Mayskoye is a local town or subdivision too small to show up in Google Maps.
The Russian mass media report of clouds of black smoke over the military airfield in the village of Hvardiiske, Simferopol district of Russian-occupied Crimea.
Source: Kommersant publication with reference to local residents, Christo Grozev, head of Bellingcat on Twitter
Details: Local residents also confirm that clouds of black smoke are seen above the airbase in Hvardiiske.
According to them, several explosions were heard earlier on the territory of the military base.
According to the source, local military departments and law enforcement agencies assume it could be an attack by a small unmanned aerial vehicle that hit an ammunition storage.
Supposedly this is video of the explosion. Usual caveats apply.
3 seconds from flash to bang, she was about a kilometer from the explosion, gives you some idea how big this was ~ pic.twitter.com/Q8RIRIxYbz
The size of the explosions suggest that Ukraine continues to receive good location intelligence about Russian military infrastructure and ammo dumps.
From the beginning of Russia’s invasion to last week, reports of major Ukrainian strike on Crimea were all but non-existent. Since then we’ve had several. Clearly Ukraine sees a new need and/or ability to strike these farther targets.
This may be an attempt to cripple Russian supply lines and air support in support of Ukraine’s slow-developing Kherson counteroffensive.
I suppose I should clarify that the Russian fleeing Crimea are not Russian soldiers but civilians.
Videos posted to social media show Russian vacationers fleeing Crimea following blasts at a military air base in the region that Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Black smoke from the Saki air base located in the west of the peninsula was visible from the nearby packed beaches after the attack on Tuesday which the Russian-appointed head of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said had left one person dead and 14 injured.
The explosion sparked an exodus from the area which has been a popular holiday resort for years with videos showing people driving over the Kerch Bridge that links Crimea with the Russian territory of Krasnodar.
In one video, a woman expressed gratitude that her car was at least moving in the traffic jam, although she tearfully lamented how she had to leave Crimea.
“Special operation. Everything goes according to plan. Russians are fleeing Crimea, there are huge traffic jams on the roads,” Twitter user Lieutenant Kizhe captioned the clip, which by Thursday morning had been viewed more than half a million times.
The news outlet Live Kuban described how Krasnodar residents faced inspections from law enforcement and cars were snarled up in an “incredible” traffic jam. One driver said he had been stuck for almost half an hour just before the bridge.
“The traffic jams toward the Kerch Strait Bridge connecting Crimea with Russia are now dozens of kilometers long.”
For all the talk of how Crimea is “inseparable” from Russia, it seems like an awful lot of actual Russians are separating from it as quickly as they possibly can. And all this after one missile strike. That would suggest that the locales know something that all the online trolls confidently and bombastically predicting inevitable Russian victory don’t. It’s also a far cry from the tenacious defense the Soviets put up in places like Leningrad and Stalingrad against actual (not pretend) Nazis, where every foot of advance was paid for in blood.
There are also reports of Russian military families living near occupied Kherson leaving.
An accurate picture of who’s winning the Russo-Ukranian War is hard to come by, but right now it sure seems like the Russians are spooked.
As images of large explosions in Russian-occupied Crimea flashed across social media, the Russian Ministry of Defense on Tuesday claimed they were the result of “several aviation munitions destroyed” at the Russian Navy’s Saki Air Base near the village of Novofedorivka.
The incident occured [sic] about 3:20 p.m. local time, according to an official Ministry of Defense (MOD) statement.
Snip.
A senior Ukrainian military official with knowledge of the situation told The New York Times that Ukrainian forces were behind the explosion.
“This was an air base from which planes regularly took off for attacks against our forces in the southern theater,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters. The official would not tell the Times what type of weapon used in the attack, saying only that “a device exclusively of Ukrainian manufacture was used.”
A top Crimean official earlier on Tuesday confirmed there were several explosions in Novofedorivka.
“So far, I can only confirm the very fact of several explosions in the Novofedorivka area. I ask everyone to wait for official messages and not to produce versions. Oleg Kryuchkov, adviser to the head of Crimea, said on Tuesday on his Telegram channel.
Viktoria Kazmirova, deputy head of the administration of the Saki district, also reported explosions at the airfield, according to Russian state-run media outlet TASS.
“Our airfield is exploding. Explosions at the airfield. Here all the windows were broken,” Kazmirova said.
The regional health ministry “reported that ambulances and medical aviation were sent to the site of the explosions, information about the victims is being specified.”
Saki Air Base, which Russia occupied when it took over Crimea in 2014, is home to the Russian Navy’s 43rd Independent Naval Attack Aviation Regiment (43 OMShAP). This regiment flies 12 Su-30SMs, six Su-24Ms, and six Su-24MRs, and came to prominence during several encounters with NATO forces in the Black Sea in 2021.
U.S. officials have told The War Zone in the recent past that targets in Crimea are fair game for Ukrainian forces using advanced U.S. weapons. The U.S. sees Crimea as illegally occupied by Russia and no different than the territory it holds in eastern Ukraine. As such, all military targets are fair game, as well as critical infrastructure it relies on to keep its war machine and occupation efforts running.
While some Ukrainian officials claim their military carried out an attack on the base, it is not unheard of for major accidents at Russian ammunition supply depots to occur, although the chances of that being the case are relatively slim in this instance.
However, Novofedorovka is about 124 miles (200 kilometers) from the front lines.
The Saki Air Base seems to be well beyond the range of Ukraine’s long-range fires.
Ukraine has 16 M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, provided by the U.S. as well as three M270 systems provided by the United Kingdom.
Both can fire a variety of 227mm rockets, including Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) types made by Lockheed Martin, as well as the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) short-range ballistic missiles. So far, the U.S. has only provided Ukraine with an unpublicized amount of M31 rockets with 200-pound class unitary warheads, which are GPS/INS guided and can hit targets at a distance of around 43 miles (70 kilometers.) The Biden administration is reluctant to provide longer-range and harder-hitting ATACMS out of concern that it might rile the Russians. In particular, it could provide a means for Ukraine to execute precision strikes on a large variety of targets well into Russia.
200km is well beyond the range of the missiles we’ve publicly given Ukraine (and of the UK-supplied MLRS system, but within the range of the ATACMS missiles we haven’t announced we’re supplying.
It’s possible this was a long-range drone strike, as 200km is well within the range of the Turkish TB2 Bayraktar drones that Ukraine is known to possess. It’s also possible that Ukraine has developed their own long-range missile system. After all, Germany had V1s and V2s that could attacked at that range all the way back in 1944. And it’s also possible that this was a ship-launched attached fired from closer in.
Whatever the actual weapon used, there seem to be very few locations in Russian-occupied Ukraine safe from further such attacks.
