Phillips P. OBrien Profile picture
Professor of Strategic Studies, @univofstandrews; Author of War and Power (Summer 2025) https://t.co/al9SES8ncC

Jul 12, 2022, 14 tweets

You might have seen this Russian ammunition dump be blown up last night by the Ukrainians, it reveals more than any other attack Ive seen about the state of the logistics war and the real problems the Russians face. We need to start with its location.

Here is a map of the Ukrainian Railway network overall, then a zeroed in map on exactly where the depot was located. Its the black dot on the upper of the two blue lines.

The two blue lines, btw, are the only two major rail lines into the Kherson front for the Russians, they are absolutely vital to the supply of their troops, and what this attack is showing is that they are in real trouble.

going down further we see the depot was in the town of Nova Kahovka, right where the railway line has its one crossing of the Dnipro River. Here is an excellent geolocation.

Here it is on google maps with a black dot.

Why this is important, is that its as predictable a location for a depot for an army at peace and without any worry of attack as one could choose. Its exactly where anyone would look for a depot, right next to a large rail line in a town near a transport hub. Depots for dummies

btw, here is a google maps picture of the rail line just on the north bank of the Dnipro, it looks to be a heavy trunk line (which it should be as its on the Ukrainian govt rail map). Basically its an easy to identify line.

So what does this reveal--basically the Russian Army has no ability or capacity to adjust. Even though the Ukrainians have been targeting such depots with great success for more than a week (with it being known that the capability was coming for a month before)...

The Russians left a ludicrously easy to locate, major supply depot exactly where someone would expect to find it. Either the Russians are unable to react because of command failure or they cant actually move the depots because they lack the road movement (dont have enough trucks)

Either way this attack reveals a great deal of where we are. The Russians had to know such an attack was high priority for the Ukrainians, but either could not or would not adjust. For them its extremely worrying.

btw, would you like to see what a large Russian ammo depot looks like from space when it blows up? Here is the Firms map. Thats alot of red dots clustered on one small area (right by a railway line over a river). That was one trememdous explosion and subsequent series of fires.

A picture of the mushroom cloud from the attack.

Someone asked about a depot being on the other rail line into Kherson, very strong evidence that there was one and the Ukrainians took it out a few days ago. Look at the bunch of fires just next to the rail bridge on the north bank of the Dnipro

That looks very much like another large depot the Ukrainians took out, with an identical predictable placement by the Russians. Very likely that both of the large Russian Kherson supply depots have been eradicated by Ukraine

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