Russian-installed officials in southern Ukraine have said that Ukrainian drones are dropping mines onto the highway, trying to create “the illusion of a blockade.”
Vladimir Saldo, the governor of the occupied part of the southern Kherson region, even compared it to the “Nazi siege of Leningrad” during World War II, describing the menacing of the highway from above as “barbaric.”
Saldo said “mobile fire teams” had been deployed to combat drones along the highway, where he accused Ukraine of targeting civilian vehicles. “This is the new reality,” he told state news agency Tass earlier this month, saying roads behind Russian lines have become more dangerous.
It’s a reality that Russia doesn’t seem to have been prepared for.
“Attacking that highway creates a problem for the Russians, which they really don’t have a solution for,” said Emil Kastehelmi, a military analyst with the Finland-based Black Bird Group.
Both sides in this war have been trading intense barrages of long-range attacks while battlefield progress and U.S.-led peace talks have stalled.
A dramatic leap in Ukraine’s drone capabilities has allowed Kyiv to inflict considerable pain on the Kremlin by hitting deeper inside Russia. But this highway-hitting “middle strike” campaign is driven by an intensified focus on Russian supply lines.
One Ukrainian drone brigade reported using a new “secret” drone to target the “Novorossiya” highway. And President Volodymyr Zelenskyy boasted last week that “there are practically no safe roads left for the occupier in the south and east of our country.”
In order to protect the highway, Russia would need to gather more air defense assets in the area, Kastehelmi said. “It’s a wide and deep area, which they would need to protect and monitor,” he said. That could leave other areas vulnerable, given Moscow’s strained resources.
In the meantime, military cargo traffic along the highway has decreased by 71% over the past two weeks, the commander of the Ukrainian drone forces, Robert Brovdi, said Tuesday. He called the operation “effective” but not a full blockade yet.
“The optics of this for Putin are awful,” said Bob Tollast, a land warfare expert at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense and security think tank in London.
Since it was annexed in 2014, Crimea has become a hub of military firepower and logistics, Tollast said, and Russian forces have used the peninsula as a “jumping-off point” for operations in Ukraine.
Kyiv has long sought to threaten Russian logistics in Crimea, but absent sufficient Western weapons, it has been innovating with uncrewed surface vessels and high-payload drones to achieve that goal.
“This follows a long period of suppression and destruction of Russian air defenses there to make way for these strikes,” said Tollast. “It amounts to a humiliating picture for the Russians,” he added.
‘Constant cycle of adaptation’
The overall front line remains largely static, and prospects for any peace deal have only dimmed in recent weeks, with Putin dismissing a taunting public letter from Zelenskyy that urged him to join face-to-face talks.
If Ukraine can sustain its pressure on Russian logistics routes, including the “Novorossiya” highway, it could bring a settlement closer, said Mykola Bielieskov, a Ukrainian military analyst and research fellow at the National Institute for Strategic Studies.
“The ultimate goal is to create the basis for larger-scale counterattacks by the Ukrainian forces,” Bielieskov said of Kyiv’s motivation for targeting the highway. If Ukraine destroys Russian logistics faster than the Russians can take countermeasures to secure the routes, “then we will gain a certain advantage,” he added.
Russia’s influential military bloggers and former military officials have criticized the Kremlin for how unprepared it has seemed in the face of these highway attacks.
“For our logistics, the problem could become even greater if measures are not taken here and now,” wrote the prominent Arhangel Speznaza Telegram channel. Another blogger, Kirill Fedorov, suggested covering the entire length of the highway in anti-drone nets as a way to stop the attacks.
“The enemy is acting brazenly,” wrote lawmaker and retired military officer Andrei Gurulev on Telegram. “Some people think Crimea is just a resort. It’s not,” said Gurulev. “Today, it’s a front-line region, and the approach to ensuring its security must be tough and military.”
Kastehelmi, the military analyst, said Ukraine has “a small window of opportunity” as Moscow struggles to defend against the highway attacks, but the war has been “a constant cycle of adaptation” and the Russians are likely to find a solution eventually.
“I think that it will get worse for the Russians before it gets better,” Kastehelmi added.
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