Ukraine Blog 49 – Logistics, Logistics and Logistics

Dear friends, family and colleagues,

Kherson and the watermelons. The question on everybody’s mind was: why I changed my Whatsapp profile picture to a watermelon. Three months ago, I promised myself to do that one day before Ukraine would liberate Kherson. The reason: the Kherson region is known across all of Ukraine because of its watermelons. In the city of Hola Prystan there’s even an annual water melon festival and every Ukrainian will get the connection.

I was wrong about the timeframe, but the way Ukraine liberated Kherson was exactly how I expected it to be. From blog 40:

“But the strategy of Ukraine is clear here. Everything is aimed at degrading Russian capabilities in order to avoid costly assaults on Russian strongholds and most of all: to avoid urban combat.”

In the end Ukraine didn’t fire a single shot while retaking Kherson city. The city is mostly intact which means no new Mariupol. This makes the liberation of Kherson not only a symbolic heavy moral boast, but also a major strategic victory for the following points:

1.       Early in the war, everyone feared, Russia would push through to Mykolayiv, Odessa and ultimately to Russian occupied Transnistria in Moldova. This is now forever off the table. Due to destroyed bridges, the Russians will not be able to repeat their initial advance from February. The only troops that were able to conduct an amphibious assault have long been destroyed.

2.       With the liberation of Kherson, all Ukrainian territory west of the Dnipro river has been recovered. This means that if the Russians think it’s a wise idea to move into Ukraine again from Belarus, this time, Ukraine can concentrate all its firepower west of the Dnipro river on defending against a Belarus attack.

3.       Not only will there be more troops available to defend on the Belarus axis, many Ukrainian troops have become available for operations elsewhere. Ukraine right now would only need like one or two brigades on the Western bank as a holding force, plus four or five HIMARS or M270 systems for long range tactical strikes (more on that later). All other troops can be deployed in Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.

I would also like to emphasize that all of Russia’s big talk about dirty bombs, blowing up Nova Kakhovka dam to flood Kherson, have proven to be big bluffs. I proves my suspicion that they are actually too scared to conduct any of such diabolical moves for the simple fact that it will cause more harm to Russia then it will gain them.

So what will be Ukraine’s next moves? All you have to do, is to realize again that what’s important in modern warfare is not heroism and brilliant tactics on the battlefield, but the ability to completely degrade your enemy’s logistics. This is exactly what the Ukrainians have proven themselves to be masters in. We can now safely say that every Ukrainian campaign starts with a relentless HIMARS campaign that works on a target list in the following sequence

1.       Ammunition depots and logistical hubs

2.       Troop concentrations

3.       Strikes against individual artillery batteries

The Ukrainians wasted no time eating watermelons and dancing hopak in Kherson. The liberation brought a lot of interesting targets within HIMARS range. Almost immediately after the liberation, the Ukrainians resumed their relentless campaign of high precision tactical strikes on ammunition depots and the Chaplynka helicopter base just north of Crimea. The Ukrainians were out of ammunition depots to target in the area’s that were within HIMARS range before, but now we are back to the familiar sounds of ammo depots that are ablaze and with lots of secondary explosions.

(3) Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 on Twitter: "Detonation of Russian ammunition in Chaplynka. (It’s said that the detonation is in the farm area west part of the village) https://t.co/cAkNsDKCEj /2 https://t.co/Cufv79sRPd" / Twitter

(3) M|§F|T 🇺🇸🇺🇦 on Twitter: "Shelling in Oleshky at night https://t.co/1TcKxz9HUG" / Twitter

And this all has to do with the fact that the Russian logistical situation was already bad before the liberation of Kherson, right now it’s disastrous. The Crimea can only be supplied via Kherson Oblast, since the Kerch bridge can’t be used for military railway supplies until October 2023. Almost the complete border of Kherson and Crimea oblast is now within HIMARS range. The only route out of HIMARS range, is the road going through Henichesk. This roads is only accessible via Melitopol. If the Ukrainians start to move on Tokmak and Melitopol, it means that all Russian logistics in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Crimea! will completely collapse. I therefore would like to make a very daring prediction: I think it’s not only possible, but highly likely that once, the Ukrainians take Melitopol, the Russians will abandon the remaining part of Kherson and also Crimea in a similar way they left the West part of Kherson oblast. Yes, you heard that right, I think the Ukrainians will retake Crimea without firing a single shot.

And Melitopol will not be the only area to watch. Around Svatove in northern Luhansk, the Ukrainians are already targeting category 3 targets on the HIMARS list that I described earlier. All indications are there that the Svatove front is about to collapse in Ukraine’s favor. When that happens, expect the same situation as Kherson: Russia will abandon all of northern Luhansk because its logistics have collapsed by then. This will also put the remaining logistics in the south under even more pressure and less sustainable.

A lot of people are skeptical about my prediction that the Russian army will collapse by December/January. Right now it seems that Russia is suffering major defeats, but that it’s army is not collapsing. However, I stick with my prediction. What everyone forgets, is that winter will come soon to Ukraine. The Ukrainians spent a lot of effort in preparing winter clothing for their troops. A lot of stuff has been donated by the west and volunteers in the Baltics states and Poland have been sewing clothes relentlessly. The Mobiks on the Russian side are still wearing their summer uniforms. Where the Ukrainians put really a lot of effort in their frontline positions, most of them have complete kitchens and quite a few even have sauna’s, the Russian positions are often a disorganized mess. This was the case even before the Mobiks arrived, but their arrival certainly didn’t improve the quality. When temperatures start to reach -20 or -30 degrees, I expect a lot of Mobiks to freeze to death. This will happen pretty soon. Implosion or not, what is sure, is that a lot will happen this winter and the frontline will not remain static.

Слава Україні!

Niels

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