The war just changed and Russia took their worst hit yet.
Ukraine has taken out the Kerch bridges linking Crimea to Russia. For you guys who understand logistics and mobility warfare, this is HUGE.
Russia, being a European army and not meant for significant deployment in regions without railroads, depends far too heavily on rail lines to move tanks and other armor as well as artillery and trucks and everything else. The whole reason the northern push from Belarus never happened was saboteurs attacking rail and fuel lines. That whole army was stuck there, causing them to eventually retreat because they couldn't move their beasts.
There now remains only a single railroad linking the eastern border with Russia Kherson and Crimea. If/when that is cut,...keeping the forces already there simply supplied with what they already need will suddenly be several magnitudes more difficult because Russia doesn't have enough trucks to convoy everything that far. And not only that, but route is through the flat and open south. Almost no cover at all. It will be an ambushing playground. And winter is coming. No supply lines? No reinforcements?
So it soon may be that Crimea and Kherson will only be able to be resupplied by ship and airdrop. That's gonna be risky with all those Stingers out there. Those Ilushin-76s don't fly at tree top.
And soon as the home team reaches Nova Kakhovka (or even sooner), they'll cut the only canal off that feeds water to Crimea, and without the Kerch crossings to supply from Russia, the only water Crimea will have is the desalinators onboard docked vessels.
Everyone knew the Kerch rail and road bridges were a target, but it was thought that it was out of range for the Ukrainians. Only the long range ATACMS munitions fired from the HIMARS have the range to reach that far from where Ukrainians currently hold territory, but those have not yet been delivered to Ukraine (or have they?) and only the 50 mile range rockets are what have been provided. So how did they do it? The bridges exploded right as a full train was traversing the impact location, which is a strong indication it may have been charges emplaced by some commando unit. We don't yet know. But if it was ATACMS or a similar missile capacity that Ukraine now suddenly is releasing, that would mean there is no area anywhere in Ukraine unable to be targeted. The 190 mile range of the ATACMS would let Ukraine hit any rail junction, any port, any marshalling yard,...anything.
https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1578605334062473216
https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1578632558153437184
https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1578638533446709248
