Trenches, blockhouses, tank traps, forests of concrete pyramids (the so-called “dragon’s teeth”). An intricate network of fortifications and excavations runs through the occupied territories of Ukraine. The Russians from invaders turned into “defenders” of the conquered lands to block the offensive of the armed forces Kyiv south of Kherson and in the eastern regions, or at least to slow it down, hoping to give the mobilized reinforcements time to familiarize themselves Russia and sent to the front to overcome the winter. An attempt that, however, could clash with Ukrainian determination and the speed of movements that Kyiv troops have already demonstrated in the United States victorious counter-offensive from Kharkiv. And this does not take into account the hypothesis that the United States is sending a stockpile of “smart bombs” to Ukraine, which are usually used by the Air Force and which allow for precise strikes and reduce military spending.
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ANALYZES
The New York Times takes up the analyzes of the American think tank Institute for the Study of War and uses satellite images to visually reconstruct the invaders’ enormous efforts to hold their positions, showing strengths and weaknesses. The purpose of the fortifications is to defend the two highways that cross the region southeast of the Dnieper up to Crimeafor if they fell into Ukrainian hands, Zelenskyy’s army would expand and join a similar counter-offensive from the north in the area of Zaporizhia, completes the circle of reconquest. Precisely to avert this scenario, Putin’s generals are increasingly relying not on drones, which are now easy prey for Kiev’s reinforced air defenses, but on the BTM-3 trenchers, which can split and cut the ground at a speed of one and one half a kilometer per hour.
That ditchesin fact, they are no longer the 19th-century ones, with the soldiers’ rifles protruding from the edges, but holes in the floor that serve as trapdoors for the tanks. Soldiers, on the other hand, do entrenched in blockhouses or deployed in front of the trenches. The satellites “watch” up to five defense lines, one of the aims of which is to direct potential counterattack flows of Ukrainian soldiers into predictable lines that would then become easy targets for missiles and light artillery fire. Some Russian military bloggers are skeptical (“These structures are just a whim,” writes Igor Strelkov). Even the river, the Dnipro, is a natural moat. The barriers are set up by the Russians perpendicular to the highways as lines from which to fire on the attackers. That stations Armies are five miles apart, a dangerous distance because it can be bypassed. Impressive forests of “dragon’s teeth” serve as both a barrier and shield for the defenders, but the ISW notes that all of these devices are ideal targets for Ukrainian artillery in the open field. In addition, the defensive lines eventually run out, get lost in the fields and are therefore laterally vulnerable. Moreover, the Russian generals appear to have deployed the less experienced soldiers, the freshly mobilized recruits, in the very first line, and the professionals in the second and third, at the risk of increasing the number of casualties and breaking through the Ukrainian forces. Another weak point that the Russians know well is the bridgehead created by the Kiev forces at the mouth of the Dnieper, i.e. the Kinburn Spit peninsula, behind which the Russians had already created a fortified strip more than three kilometers long before their loss to prevent him the ‘Ukrainian advance from the west.
Chechens
The Russians just have to dig in and strike with snipers. As in the video posted to Telegram by Chechen leader Kadyrov: Two Ukrainian soldiers advance in a field framed by sniper rifles and are killed simultaneously. “From now on they will be careful not to walk with their heads held high,” commented Warlord Kadyrov.
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