Thread by @QuillFirePoetry

🧵As Twitter seems overrun by armchair generals, it's hard to imagine how one more could hurt:

Fact 1: By destroying the bridges crossing the #Dnieper River, #Ukraine has trapped approximately 25,000 #Russian troops on the north side.

Fact 2: Said Russian force is now incapable of withdrawing or being resupplied (ammunition, fuel or food).

Fact 3: So long as the Ukrainians possess #HIMARS, they can easily prevent the Russians from repairing the bridges and rectifying the situation.

Fact 4: With each passing day, the situation gets worse as Russian troops consume whatever supplies they possess at the local level.

Fact 5: The Ukrainians have no such re-supply problems.

Conclusion 1: Respecting those 25,000 trapped Russian troops, it’s all over but the crying. Their choices will soon be swim, commit suicide or surrender. Armies cannot survive absent massive levels of ongoing materiel support.

Conclusion 2: The loss of those 25,000 Russian troops (and their equipment) will deal a massive blow to the Russian war effort in general.

Conclusion 3: The Ukrainians retaking #Kherson will expose #Crimea and the entire southern land corridor to direct Ukrainian (cont)

attack. This will include the #KerchBridge, the sole avenue of supply for Crimea (other than by air and sea which is logistically impractical).

Conclusion 4: Russia’s only logistically tenable position would be to withdraw its forces from southern Ukraine and concentrate them

in the #Donbas.

Conclusion 5: That said, if Crimea is lost then the entire point of controlling the Donbas (securing the southern land corridor to Crimea) becomes moot.

Commentary: Russia has already lost a huge number of men and military assets in Ukraine. The further loss

of the men and military assets in the Kherson theater will leave it with a force barely capable of credibly defending Russia proper (land access to the Kola Peninsula, the location of the bulk of Russia’s nuclear and naval might, is via a parallel 700 km long road and railway,

both within easy range of the #Finnish border … now part of #NATO) a consideration of eminently higher importance than the fate of the Donbas and Crimea. Hence, from Russia’s perspective, the Ukraine war must end before Russian forces fall below the ‘critical mass’ needed to

defend the homeland (NATO recently increased its Rapid Reaction Force from 40,000 to 300,000). Add to this the crippling effects of western sanctions and the fact that the quality of Russian arms is decreasing (they’re running out of advanced weapons without the ability to

replenish them in a timely manner) while Ukraine’s is increasing (their inherited Soviet-era weapons are being replaced with modern western ones) and it becomes difficult to imagine how the loss of Kherson would not result in Russia searching for a non-military end to the

conflict.

Wars continue until the perceived cost of war becomes higher than the perceived cost of peace. Inevitably, the loss of Kherson and its garrison would dramatically change the calculus.