Thread by @ThreshedThought

Ok. Now that Ukraine has taken the settlement of Robotyne, what does this mean for the wider strategic environment?

Short version: there better be some movement soon, or time will run out.

As we all know, Ukraine is launching a general offensive on Russian positions in four broad areas.

The aim - above all else is to get to the Sea of Azov coastline so that the Russian forces are split into two.

So the two important thrusts are the ones in the middle going south and the flank attacks (Bahkmut in the east, and across the river opposite Kherson) are to draw Russian forces away from the main Ukrainian effort in the South.

But progress has been very slow. Steady. But slow.

This has largely been because of the strength and depth of the Russian defences.

And so after some initial exuberance the Ukrainians switched to tried and tested slow and steady method where they degraded Russian artillery pieces and destroyed their logistics before assaulting.

This has paid some dividends. Several kilometres of territory have been liberated, and every so often a settlement is taken, or a road junction.

But is it enough?

We are reaching a key point here.

We are more than half way through the fighting season by now. And we are yet to see an operational level breakthrough.

And this is vital - because 2024 is US presidential election year.

It is not too much of a stretch to say that the US (and hence the rest of the allies) continuing to supply Ukraine at the levels they are doing now without Ukr operational level progress…

… seems less likely

So what are the options going forward?

Well. Ukraine has done quite some
Significant work on degrading Russian artillery and logistics (and bridges but we’ll chat about them later).

They have also forced the Russians to deploy their operational level reserves.

How do we know this?

Because we see units being moved about between different areas of the Russian front line.

So this is all excellent news.

But no breakthrough.

The way of these things is that nothing happens for ages and then there is a flood of activity as a sector of the line collapses or a bridge is destroyed.

And I do think we are heading to one of those moments.

Russian moving units up and down its own line, while Ukraine still has reserves is a key indicator of that.

So let’s turn my question on it’s head and ask: what’s the minimum thing that Ukraine could achieve that keeps them strategically in keeping with their allies and keeps the narrative alive that supplying Ukraine is the right thing to do.

Or put more simply:

What do they have to achieve to make it easy for Biden to argue in his re-election campaign that he did the right thing supplying Ukraine, that those supplies should continue, AND BIDEN WINS.

Here it is:

The Ukrainians need to force the Russians to withdraw from the area shaded in blue.

This would be a significant operational victory that keeps the door open for a strategic victory later on.

So how do they do that?

Well. I’m old enough to remember the Kherson campaign over summer 2022, leading to the eventual withdrawal by Russian troops from Kherson at the end of the year.

And the Ukrainians achieved that not by fighting the Russians every inch of the way, but by cutting off their supply and forcing them to withdraw.

Here are the nodes and supply routes you need to hit to completely isolate the Russian forces west of Melitopol

They are:

- Tokmak (major railway junction) - black gold circle
- M14 highway (only highway in area for heavy trucks) - black line
- The three bridges/roads into Crimea where Russian supplies are staged (black circles)

So how are they doing?

Tokmak is already under range of massed artillery (152 or 155mm).

You don’t need to physically sit on something to stop it acting as a supply hub.

Artillery control, providing there are enough shells, will do just fine.

What about the three bridges or roads connecting Crimea?

These have been hit repeatedly in recent weeks and I’m fairly confident that Ukraine will be able to drop them / destroy the road when it wants to.

This is what the Ukrainians did with the Antonovsky bridge in Kherson last year (weakened it and then destroyed it).

This seems to be the same play book.

So this just leaves interdicting the M14
Highway.

And again, the Ukrainians don’t need to sit on it - just get artillery control over it.

And that looks something like this - the Ukrainians need to advance to the blue line in at least one place with a salient wide enough that they can hold it.

This is approx 30km from the M14 which is about the range that the Ukrainians need to bring their 155mm howitzers to bear.

So this Robotyne assault seems like the right idea.

If they can get to about 10 miles past Tokmak then they can just reach the M14 highway with artillery as it enters Melitopol.

There are a few other spots along the front line where they can achieve this.

But they all require a roughly 25 mile advance.

Now this is possible - the Ukrainians retook 1860 square miles of territory in Kharkiv.

But it only happened when the Russian front collapsed.

And so this is what needs to happen - the movement of Russian troops between different areas of the front has to be a prelude to a collapse in the front somewhere that the Ukr can throw their reserves into.

And they then need to be able to exploit that collapse to get within artillery range of the M14 highway.

If they manage that then the Russian withdrawal from the blue shaded area is a forgone conclusion.

Like I said, they better get a move on. Time is running out.

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