Kyiv steps up campaign to isolate Russian-occuppied Crimea

Kyiv aims to constrict the flow of Russian supplies from the peninsula to the front as its counteroffensive makes slow progress.

An explosion at a military training ground in Crimea last month. Picture: Reuters

Ukraine targeted the only bridge linking Crimea to the Russian mainland on Saturday, stepping up a campaign to isolate the peninsula that was annexed by Moscow in 2014.

Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-installed head of Crimea, said two Ukrainian missiles were shot down over the Kerch Strait early on Saturday. Hours later, he said another missile had been intercepted in the area. Russia’s Defence Ministry said Ukrainian forces had attempted to strike the bridge with a modified surface-to-air missile.

The bridge wasn’t damaged, Mr Aksyonov said. A temporary smokescreen to obscure the bridge from attacks had been placed over the bridge.

Ukrainian officials didn’t comment on the strikes.

Kyiv’s goal is to undermine Russia’s position on the territory and make it harder for Moscow to support its occupying force in southern Ukraine.

With the prospects of a frontline breakthrough dimming, Ukraine has sought to reach behind the front line using longer-range missiles supplied by Western allies to strike in and around Crimea. Earlier this month, long-range missiles slammed into two bridges connecting Crimea to Russian-­occupied territory in southern Ukraine, where Kyiv’s army is struggling to break through Russian entrenchments.

By choking off replenishments of necessities to and from Crimea, Ukraine hopes its limited forces can make life and military operations on the Russian-controlled area untenable, forcing some kind of retreat or negotiation, or permitting a Ukrainian invasion to retake Crimea, according to analysts.

More immediately, Kyiv is working to weaken Russian defences in the south of the country, where Ukrainian forces are struggling to advance through Russian minefields and other obstacles.

“When there is not enough progress on the front line, the importance of these strikes increases,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at the Kyiv-based National Institute for Strategic Studies. “Everything that complicates and increases time plays to our advantage.”

Ukrainian forces have retaken about 240 sqkm of territory since launching the counter­offensive in June, but hopes of a breakthrough have collided with the reality of Russian minefields, fortifications and air power.

The Crimean peninsula has outsized strategic and symbolic weight. Since overrunning a swath of territory along Ukraine’s southern coast in the early days of the invasion, Moscow has sought to use logistics routes along the land bridge that connects mainland Russia with newly claimed territories. But long-range artillery supplied by the US last year brought much of that area within striking range for Ukraine. That has forced Moscow to rely more heavily on connections across a swampy isthmus between the land bridge and Crimea.

Last Sunday, Ukrainian forces unleashed a barrage of long-range missiles, targeting one of two main road supply routes between Crimea and occupied southern Ukraine. The Chonhar Bridge is the most direct route from Russia’s Crimean logistics hub at Dzhankoi and the front line in the Zaporizhzhia region. A secondary crossing at Henichesk was also struck.

A previous strike on the Chonhar Bridge forced a temporary closure that caused Russian logistics convoys to take at least 50 per cent longer to reach the front via alternative routes, according to the UK’s Ministry of Defence. Within 24 hours of the strike in June, Russian authorities constructed a pontoon bridge replacement in an indication of its importance to the war effort.

The Russian-appointed governor of Ukraine’s partially occupied Kherson region played down the impact of strikes and said mainly civilian traffic was disrupted. “This does not change anything in how our army and armed forces work,” he said.

Military analysts, however, said damage to the bridge would likely force Russian military convoys to use a longer route between Crimea and occupied southern Ukraine -- if only until a pontoon is operating.

The distance via alternative crossings near Armyansk is 120km further, adding about three hours to the time it would take for a Russian military convoy to travel to the front line, said Oleksiy Melnyk, co-director of Foreign Relations and International Security Programmes at Razumkov Centre, a Kyiv-based think tank.

“Logistics is about volume but it is also about speed,” he said. The alternative routes also pass closer to Ukrainian positions on the western bank of the Dnipro River -- often within range of artillery fire. The risk can be mitigated by using smaller village roads northeast, but that is even slower and requires more complicated logistics support.

Anatoliy Kharchenko, the commander of a reconnaissance company operating in southeastern Ukraine, said the strikes were making a difference on the front line. Logistical challenges had reduced Russia’s advantage in artillery on the southern front.

As well as the strikes on bridges, Captain Kharchenko said the accurate Ukrainian counter-battery fire was helping. Ukrainian forces were also striking smaller Russian ammunition dumps within Ukraine, with residents in occupied territories passing the dumps’ locations to Ukrainian forces.

Trent Telenko, a former official at the Pentagon’s Defense Contract Management Agency who has studied Russian military logistics, said Ukrainian strikes were putting pressure on Russian fuel supplies. Russian barge traffic and railway ferries would be a valuable target for Kyiv, he said.

Russian authorities are working to repair the Kerch Strait Bridge, which Ukraine struck last month for the second time since the invasion using naval drones. Built at a cost of $US4 billion after Crimea’s annexation, it is the only bridge connecting Crimea with the Russian mainland. The bridge is now open to passenger cars though not heavy-goods vehicles, according to the Crimean Transport Ministry. However the railway section of the bridge, which is more important for military supplies, remains operational, the Kremlin said.

“Logistics is everything, starting with bread and ending with tanks,” said Melnyk, invoking the words of US General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force during World War I: “Soldiers win battles, logistics win wars.”

The Wall Street Journal