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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, possible beneath heavy artillery fireplace alongside roads lined with Russian armor and machine weapons. However Kyiv has a extra rapid objective.
That’s to penetrate deep sufficient into occupied territory to carry extra Russian navy targets inside vary of Ukraine’s steadily increasing arsenal, additional disrupting Moscow’s provide strains and its skill to parry Ukrainian advances.
“The principle activity we face now, along with shifting ahead, is, after all, to weaken the enemy’s skill to defend itself,” Hanna Malyar, the deputy minister of protection, mentioned on Ukrainian nationwide tv. “And in reality, that is what we’re doing now.”
The Ukrainian navy claims to be destroying dozens of Russian weapons depots each week whereas continuously trying to find command posts, air protection techniques and concentrations of troops to hit.
It’s not doable to independently assess Ukraine’s success in degrading Russian forces and logistical operations. However this month, Col. Serhii Baranov of the Ukrainian navy’s normal workers, 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 navy combating in Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia, in contrast the counteroffensive to a boxing match, saying that Ukraine intends to strike with longer vary weapons to “maintain the opponent at arm’s size” so as to keep away from shut fight.
Final yr, after america equipped longer-range rocket techniques referred to as 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.
Earlier than Ukraine launched its counteroffensive two months in the past, its frontline positions have been between 60 and 90 miles from the coast, simply out of the attain of HIMARS, truck-mounted launchers that fireside satellite-guided rockets.
That implies that each mile that Ukraine beneficial properties in its present assault, the nearer it will get to Russian targets alongside the coast.
Although the HIMARS are cellular — the identify stands for Excessive Mobility Artillery Rocket System — Ukrainian forces have a restricted quantity, and like to maintain them far from the entrance line. They have to first consolidate their beneficial properties and present they will maintain newly reclaimed territory, usually 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 equipped Western weapons are much 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 one land route from Russia to Crimea is the Kerch Bridge, which has come beneath assault twice through the battle, with Moscow blaming Ukraine every time.
Ukraine has additionally attacked the foremost roads connecting Crimea to the southern Ukrainian mainland.
Moscow’s different fundamental provide route runs from western Russia by the occupied territories of japanese Ukraine, the place Kyiv’s forces are additionally making an attempt to advance close to the occupied metropolis of Bakhmut.
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