Ukrainian Forces Are Advancing In Southern Ukraine
David Axe | Oct 2, 2022 | 05:02pm EDTJust 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. . .
. . . The drumbeat of Ukrainian losses in the south—scores of trucks, fighting vehicles and tanks and even a priceless Su-24 bomber—underscored the intensity of the fighting.
But the Russians appeared to be losing more people and equipment than the Ukrainians were losing. And, perhaps more importantly, Ukrainian supply lines in the south were intact while Russian supply lines were fraying under relentless attacks by Ukrainian rocketeers and gunners.
It took longer for Ukrainian forces to break through Russian lines in the south than in the east. That breakthrough reportedly occurred on Sunday. Videos from the front confirm Ukrainian troops rolling into Zolota Balka and Khreshchenivka, along the right bank of the three-mile-wide Dnipro River. There were reports the Ukrainians had reached as far as Dudchany and were driving Russian troops to Beryslav.
If confirmed, that means the Ukrainians have penetrated as deep as 15 miles into territory the Russians still held as recently as last week. Worse for the Russians, the Ukrainians are in a position to surround Russian units on the western side of the Dnipro, eventually trapping them between Ukrainian positions and the wide river. “Not a good place for the [Russians] to be,” mused Mark Hertling, a retired U.S. Army general. . .
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/10/02/ukrainian-forces-are-advancing-in-southern-ukraine/