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On July 18 2023 23:58 Sent. wrote:
Can someone explain to me how defending Crimea without the bridge is supposed to be impossible? Ukraine doesn't have air or naval superiority in the area and Russians can keep supplying the peninsula with ships small enough that it wouldn't be worth it to try to sink them with high precision missiles. It's not like Kherson where it wasn't really possible to reliably supply the area from land AND the sea.
The Kerch bridge is the only connection by land to mainland Russia. It's essential as a supply route.
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On July 18 2023 23:58 Sent. wrote:
Can someone explain to me how defending Crimea without the bridge is supposed to be impossible? Ukraine doesn't have air or naval superiority in the area and Russians can keep supplying the peninsula with ships small enough that it wouldn't be worth it to try to sink them with high precision missiles. It's not like Kherson where it wasn't really possible to reliably supply the area from land AND the sea.
So this isn't completely without precedent. Norwegian fishermen had a big reputation as smuglers during ww2 for instance. However small boats can never make up for the amount of supplies you can truck in and out through roads and railways. Not to mention good luck transporting any noteworthy amount of tanks on small boats. Rotating in and out the hardware and personell you need to what effectively becomes a small island is a proper nightmare.
But also there's some misconceptions going on. While the destruction of the bridge might become important in the event of a Crimean attack, that is not the goal right now. Currently, a lot of supplies going through Crimea are meant for the Kherson front lines. Removing the bridge effectively removes one of two avenues of getting supplies into the region, both constraining the amount of supplies that can be delivered, as well as forcing them through one specific path that can more easily be observed and bombed
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On July 19 2023 01:27 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2023 23:58 Sent. wrote:
Can someone explain to me how defending Crimea without the bridge is supposed to be impossible? Ukraine doesn't have air or naval superiority in the area and Russians can keep supplying the peninsula with ships small enough that it wouldn't be worth it to try to sink them with high precision missiles. It's not like Kherson where it wasn't really possible to reliably supply the area from land AND the sea.
The Kerch bridge is the only connection by land to mainland Russia. It's essential as a supply route.
Is everyone pretending this part doesn't exist? Im not up to date with the latest spins but that's a land connection to the rest of Russia. Is Crimea under direct threat where active hostilities would take place there? Looking at the maps the lines have barely moved in the last 45 days of the offensive
EDIT: Also, the Kiev government completely cut off the 2,5 million people living there from everything in 2014. The bridge was completed in 2018/2019. Its not like everyone just starved to death and society collapsed because they didn't have a bridge for 4-5 years. They generated the electricity needed, they found the food and water (albeit the water situation was a big problem until February/March 2022) needed to be independent. If the whole bridge disappeared overnight the Russian military goods crossing the Kerch straight would be completely safe, yes it would take longer but eh, they've got the land route too.
If Russia started bombing all the bridges on the Dnieper in retaliation it would be a bigger problem for Kiev than the Crimean bridge for Moscow
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Since when is Ukraine Russia?
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On July 18 2023 23:58 Sent. wrote:
Can someone explain to me how defending Crimea without the bridge is supposed to be impossible? Ukraine doesn't have air or naval superiority in the area and Russians can keep supplying the peninsula with ships small enough that it wouldn't be worth it to try to sink them with high precision missiles. It's not like Kherson where it wasn't really possible to reliably supply the area from land AND the sea.
If your looking at Crimea and the occupied land bridge to it you have the following supply routes:
- Kerch bridge road
- Kerch bridge train
- Land bridge train
- Land bridge road
- Ferries
Small boats simply cannot carry enough military material (remember the discussion about how big modern shells are previously) to make a significant difference.
Forget food and water too, Crimea has enough potable water from desalination plants for the population, it's really only agriculture that suffers now.
So if Ukraine cuts the supply routes this doesn't make logistics impossible, just really, really hard. That makes attrition warfare much more effective since especially your artillery suffers. You simply don't have enough shells to respond and over time the enemy starts taking out your artillery and anti air assets. This means they can move their artillery and air assets forward which means they have much greater forward firepower (since even mortars are in range of the front line without much fear of counter battery fire) and their drones and aircraft are more effective while your drones and aircraft are less effective.
It takes time but every day you fight the position will get worse.
Now, in order to cut those supply lines Ukraine has to do a lot of things. Of course it's good for them if they bring the bridge down now (especially the rail bridge since Russia prefers rail). But at this points it doesn't matter that much.
If you want to cut land based logistics you have 3 levels of pressure you can put on it.
1) Within missile range. The rail network through Tokmak and Komysh-Zoria are within missile range right now and are getting hit. But long range rockets are expensive and relatively rare and rail is easy to repair. It probably affects Russian operations and if they can cut the rail bridge it would affect them even more. But only to the "west" of these cities.
2) Within comfortable tube artillery range (~20 km). Now you can shell more or less "non stop". This would effect logistics going through rail hubs immensely. Remember that Russia retreated from Kherson before Ukraine actually got into tube artillery range from their ponton bridge.
3) Boots on the ground. Completely cut off.
If you look at the map you can see that the rail network on the land bridge is less than halfway between the frontline and the coastline while the highway goes mostly through the coast (head up a bit to Melitopol).
So if you can both blow the bridge and get within 20 km of a major railway hub logistics are going to be based around a single highway. But until Ukraine advances that much AND blows both parts of the bridge the situation will be far from critical.
In my (uniformed opinion) it mostly comes down to if Ukraine can reach and breach the first line of fortifications or not. If they can on either front line they will be well within artillery range of the railway hubs and the Kerch bridge will be well within their long range missile range. Mostly a matter of time until the bridge falls and territories to the east of the railway hubs will have supply issues. Combined with having passed most of the fortifications I think Ukraine cuts the land bridge at that point, leaving ships as the only point of supply. And those kind of ship do not deal well with modern anti ship missiles (which, coincidentally can be mounted on F16).
But if they can't get through the first defensive lines I don't think they can cause enough logistical damage to really make a difference.
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CuddlyCuteKitten, I agree with what you are saying. Just want to note one thing. Those expensive missiles become more effective if logistics concentrate on one route. There are more things that needs to be moved, thus more things to hit in one spot and any disruption has a larger % impact on total logistics.
So while removing the bridge would have small direct impact on the current war, the cost of running the war would increase for Russia.
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On July 19 2023 05:40 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2023 02:58 zeo wrote:On July 19 2023 01:27 Magic Powers wrote:On July 18 2023 23:58 Sent. wrote:
Can someone explain to me how defending Crimea without the bridge is supposed to be impossible? Ukraine doesn't have air or naval superiority in the area and Russians can keep supplying the peninsula with ships small enough that it wouldn't be worth it to try to sink them with high precision missiles. It's not like Kherson where it wasn't really possible to reliably supply the area from land AND the sea.
The Kerch bridge is the only connection by land to mainland Russia. It's essential as a supply route. Is everyone pretending this part doesn't exist? Im not up to date with the latest spins but that's a land connection to the rest of Russia. Is Crimea under direct threat where active hostilities would take place there? Looking at the maps the lines have barely moved in the last 45 days of the offensive EDIT: Also, the Kiev government completely cut off the 2,5 million people living there from everything in 2014. The bridge was completed in 2018/2019. Its not like everyone just starved to death and society collapsed because they didn't have a bridge for 4-5 years. They generated the electricity needed, they found the food and water (albeit the water situation was a big problem until February/March 2022) needed to be independent. If the whole bridge disappeared overnight the Russian military goods crossing the Kerch straight would be completely safe, yes it would take longer but eh, they've got the land route too. If Russia started bombing all the bridges on the Dnieper in retaliation it would be a bigger problem for Kiev than the Crimean bridge for Moscow I really doubt a municipality had the power to cut anyone off. Do you mean the Ukrainian government? Is it some sort of weird own to call it the Kiev gov? Like would it be a burn if I started calling it the Moscow gov instead of Russian? I do not get it, it’s like the weakest burn that is confusing but not cutting.
My guess is that it is about questioning the legitimacy of the government of Ukraine.
"It is not the government of Ukraine, it is just the (western installed!) Kiev government, they don't speak for Ukraine as a whole."
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On July 19 2023 02:58 zeo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2023 01:27 Magic Powers wrote:On July 18 2023 23:58 Sent. wrote:
Can someone explain to me how defending Crimea without the bridge is supposed to be impossible? Ukraine doesn't have air or naval superiority in the area and Russians can keep supplying the peninsula with ships small enough that it wouldn't be worth it to try to sink them with high precision missiles. It's not like Kherson where it wasn't really possible to reliably supply the area from land AND the sea.
The Kerch bridge is the only connection by land to mainland Russia. It's essential as a supply route. Is everyone pretending this part doesn't exist? Im not up to date with the latest spins but that's a land connection to the rest of Russia. Is Crimea under direct threat where active hostilities would take place there? Looking at the maps the lines have barely moved in the last 45 days of the offensive EDIT: Also, the Kiev government completely cut off the 2,5 million people living there from everything in 2014. The bridge was completed in 2018/2019. Its not like everyone just starved to death and society collapsed because they didn't have a bridge for 4-5 years. They generated the electricity needed, they found the food and water (albeit the water situation was a big problem until February/March 2022) needed to be independent. If the whole bridge disappeared overnight the Russian military goods crossing the Kerch straight would be completely safe, yes it would take longer but eh, they've got the land route too. If Russia started bombing all the bridges on the Dnieper in retaliation it would be a bigger problem for Kiev than the Crimean bridge for Moscow
No, the Russian government did that when they invaded the place.
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On July 19 2023 05:40 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2023 02:58 zeo wrote:On July 19 2023 01:27 Magic Powers wrote:On July 18 2023 23:58 Sent. wrote:
Can someone explain to me how defending Crimea without the bridge is supposed to be impossible? Ukraine doesn't have air or naval superiority in the area and Russians can keep supplying the peninsula with ships small enough that it wouldn't be worth it to try to sink them with high precision missiles. It's not like Kherson where it wasn't really possible to reliably supply the area from land AND the sea.
The Kerch bridge is the only connection by land to mainland Russia. It's essential as a supply route. Is everyone pretending this part doesn't exist? Im not up to date with the latest spins but that's a land connection to the rest of Russia. Is Crimea under direct threat where active hostilities would take place there? Looking at the maps the lines have barely moved in the last 45 days of the offensive EDIT: Also, the Kiev government completely cut off the 2,5 million people living there from everything in 2014. The bridge was completed in 2018/2019. Its not like everyone just starved to death and society collapsed because they didn't have a bridge for 4-5 years. They generated the electricity needed, they found the food and water (albeit the water situation was a big problem until February/March 2022) needed to be independent. If the whole bridge disappeared overnight the Russian military goods crossing the Kerch straight would be completely safe, yes it would take longer but eh, they've got the land route too. If Russia started bombing all the bridges on the Dnieper in retaliation it would be a bigger problem for Kiev than the Crimean bridge for Moscow I really doubt a municipality had the power to cut anyone off. Do you mean the Ukrainian government? Is it some sort of weird own to call it the Kiev gov? Like would it be a burn if I started calling it the Moscow gov instead of Russian? I do not get it, it’s like the weakest burn that is confusing but not cutting.
Its an extreemly common way to talk about countries and their governments.
Washington took a hard stance..
Beijing warned Hanoi...
Belgrade didnt come to the meeting
London cut off communication with Canberra during the Emu War
Those are just examples but you've never heard of countries being refered to after their capital cities/seats of government when interacting with one another? Really? Why would it be a burn if anyone said 'Washington did so and so'? I also call Russia 'Moscow' in the same post
Seems like a weird thing to cherry pick from that post
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On July 19 2023 12:31 zeo wrote:
Its an extreemly common way to talk about countries and their governments.
Washington took a hard stance..
Beijing warned Hanoi...
Belgrade didnt come to the meeting
London cut off communication with Canberra during the Emu War
That's when discussing diplomacy and maybe policy.
By saying Kiev 'cut-off the power' you are giving the impression that employees of Kiev city energy systems were running around Crimea disconnecting cables.
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On July 19 2023 17:05 pmp10 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2023 12:31 zeo wrote:
Its an extreemly common way to talk about countries and their governments.
Washington took a hard stance..
Beijing warned Hanoi...
Belgrade didnt come to the meeting
London cut off communication with Canberra during the Emu War
That's when discussing diplomacy and maybe policy. By saying Kiev 'cut-off the power' you are giving the impression that employees of Kiev city energy systems were running around Crimea disconnecting cables.
In February, the city administration announced that Simferopol, the capital of the Russian-annexed Crimea, had enough water supply to last only 100 days. The water shortage in one of the biggest cities on the peninsula reflects the situation in the entire region. In 2014, in response to the annexation of Crimea, Kyiv decided to cut off the water supply to the peninsula. Chronic water shortages have been an acute problem ever since.
Crimea has always depended on the water supply from the mainland. The 400-kilometer-long North Crimean Canal (NCC) carried water from Ukraine’s biggest river, Dnipro, to the peninsula. Before the occupation, the canal provided 85% of drinkable water to Crimea.
Today, the water crisis affects all facets of life on the peninsula. It has become a source of tension not only between Moscow and Kyiv but also within the Ukrainian government itself. The crisis has gradually transformed the peninsula, creating challenges to the eventual reintegration of Crimea back into Ukraine
https://www.eurasiareview.com/16042020-the-water-crisis-in-crimea-analysis/
Heres a pro-EU article from 2020 about the water shortages/problems in Crimea. Its completely normal diction to refer to a countries actions by its capitol city. A country it wouldnt be normal for would be the Netherlands for instance. Saying The Hague did something instead of the Netherlands just sounds weird, or would you say Amsterdam? Idk.
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On July 19 2023 19:24 zeo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2023 17:05 pmp10 wrote:On July 19 2023 12:31 zeo wrote:
Its an extreemly common way to talk about countries and their governments.
Washington took a hard stance..
Beijing warned Hanoi...
Belgrade didnt come to the meeting
London cut off communication with Canberra during the Emu War
That's when discussing diplomacy and maybe policy. By saying Kiev 'cut-off the power' you are giving the impression that employees of Kiev city energy systems were running around Crimea disconnecting cables. In February, the city administration announced that Simferopol, the capital of the Russian-annexed Crimea, had enough water supply to last only 100 days. The water shortage in one of the biggest cities on the peninsula reflects the situation in the entire region. In 2014, in response to the annexation of Crimea, Kyiv decided to cut off the water supply to the peninsula. Chronic water shortages have been an acute problem ever since.
Crimea has always depended on the water supply from the mainland. The 400-kilometer-long North Crimean Canal (NCC) carried water from Ukraine’s biggest river, Dnipro, to the peninsula. Before the occupation, the canal provided 85% of drinkable water to Crimea.
Today, the water crisis affects all facets of life on the peninsula. It has become a source of tension not only between Moscow and Kyiv but also within the Ukrainian government itself. The crisis has gradually transformed the peninsula, creating challenges to the eventual reintegration of Crimea back into Ukrainehttps://www.eurasiareview.com/16042020-the-water-crisis-in-crimea-analysis/Heres a pro-EU article from 2020 about the water shortages/problems in Crimea. Its completely normal diction to refer to a countries actions by its capitol city. A country it wouldnt be normal for would be the Netherlands for instance. Saying The Hague did something instead of the Netherlands just sounds weird, or would you say Amsterdam? Idk.
I don't really get why you're being bullied over this point in particular. It seemed totally unremarkable to me. Now, I disagree with you on almost everything you actually say, but referring to governments and their decisions by their location is very normal.
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On July 19 2023 19:24 zeo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2023 17:05 pmp10 wrote:On July 19 2023 12:31 zeo wrote:
Its an extreemly common way to talk about countries and their governments.
Washington took a hard stance..
Beijing warned Hanoi...
Belgrade didnt come to the meeting
London cut off communication with Canberra during the Emu War
That's when discussing diplomacy and maybe policy. By saying Kiev 'cut-off the power' you are giving the impression that employees of Kiev city energy systems were running around Crimea disconnecting cables. In February, the city administration announced that Simferopol, the capital of the Russian-annexed Crimea, had enough water supply to last only 100 days. The water shortage in one of the biggest cities on the peninsula reflects the situation in the entire region. In 2014, in response to the annexation of Crimea, Kyiv decided to cut off the water supply to the peninsula. Chronic water shortages have been an acute problem ever since.
Crimea has always depended on the water supply from the mainland. The 400-kilometer-long North Crimean Canal (NCC) carried water from Ukraine’s biggest river, Dnipro, to the peninsula. Before the occupation, the canal provided 85% of drinkable water to Crimea.
Today, the water crisis affects all facets of life on the peninsula. It has become a source of tension not only between Moscow and Kyiv but also within the Ukrainian government itself. The crisis has gradually transformed the peninsula, creating challenges to the eventual reintegration of Crimea back into Ukrainehttps://www.eurasiareview.com/16042020-the-water-crisis-in-crimea-analysis/Heres a pro-EU article from 2020 about the water shortages/problems in Crimea. Its completely normal diction to refer to a countries actions by its capitol city. A country it wouldnt be normal for would be the Netherlands for instance. Saying The Hague did something instead of the Netherlands just sounds weird, or would you say Amsterdam? Idk.
By that notion "Moscow annexes Kherson" is the same as"Moscow decides to annex Kherson".
I'm no native speaker but I read these very differently.
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Norway28561 Posts
The only difference between those two is that one describes a decision to do something and the other describes the aftermath of the decision. Aside from that I second Acro, if you guys want to be confrontational towards zeo I can think of tons of better ways than challenging him on him using a commonly accepted phrasing.
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Russian Federation605 Posts
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On July 20 2023 00:32 Ardias wrote:Meanwhile Russia declares naval blockade of Ukrainian coast starting 00:00 a.m. Moscow time, 20th July. www.interfax.ru/amp/912341
That's a gesture of goodwill if I've ever seen one.
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Lets see if Ukraine can hand out some more submarine conversions.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/Wxt3QSq.jpg)
