Just a day after liberating Lyman, a key supply hub for Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian forces are on the move in the south, too. As in Lyman, Russian troops increasingly are cut off from resupply—and in acute danger of encirclement.
Just a day after liberating Lyman, a key supply hub for Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian forces are on the move in the south, too. As in Lyman, Russian troops increasingly are cut off from resupply—and in acute danger of encirclement.
With each successive phase of their twin counteroffensives that kicked off in the south and east a month ago, the Ukrainians are refining a strategy for defeating a Russian army that, on paper, is bigger along many sectors of the front.
That strategy requires patience, discipline and precision, three qualities that have come to define Ukrainian operations as Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds into its eighth month.
The Ukrainians first use long-range rockets to sever Russian supply lines and disrupt command, then probe Russian defenses for weak spots before exploiting these weaknesses and penetrating into the Russians’ rear areas, triggering a rout that ends with the Russians retreating from huge swathes of territory and abandoning enormous quantities of usable equipment.
Ukraine’s Operational Command South began its counterlogistics campaign back in May, shortly after receiving new American-made howitzers and wheeled High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems. For more than three months, the Ukrainians targeted bridges, railways, supply dumps and command centers in and around Kherson, a strategic Black Sea port anchoring Russian-occupied Kherson Oblast between the Inhulets and Dnipro Rivers.
