Russia’s logistical nightmare in Crimea is just beginning. With Ukrainian strikes ramping up throughout Russian-held Crimea, Russian authorities have suspended civilian fuel sales since new shipments can’t reach the peninsula.
Since many of you have asked, the Kerch Strait Bridge primarily remains open to allow civilians to leave Crimea for Russia. However, Ukraine’s broader strategy for Crimea is to systematically destroy the infrastructure needed to supply it. And with the new drone supplies and capabilities, this is very plausible.
Much of the territory Russia has occupied since 2014 has become increasingly difficult to supply, and without effective countermeasures, Russia’s strategic position is steadily weakening. This isn’t a done deal, but the momentum is shifting in Ukraine’s favor.
Hey all, Peter Zeihan here, coming to you from Colorado. Today is the 21st of June. And the new news is that in Russian occupied territory in Crimea, in southern Ukraine, Russian authorities have suspended all fuel purchases for all civilians, whether it’s personal cars or businesses. Short version is that the Ukrainians have now deployed enough drones reliably, enough that can target things like fuel trucks, that there is no more fuel coming in.
The Russian Navy has long since abandoned the province, and everything has to come in by rail. And those rail bridges have now been damaged or truck. And now the Ukrainians patrolling with dozens of drones at a time over the territory and basically hitting the drugs before they can get anywhere close. So we basically have whatever little fuel is left being hoarded by the military.
And the only reason that the Kurt Strait Bridge remains operational, that’s a that’s a bridge that comes from Russia proper over straight at the Sea of Azov into Crimea, is so that civilians in Crimea can flee to Russia. It’s not that the Ukrainians are planning a final push or anything to take over the territory, but they have systematically damaged all of the infrastructure that allows the Russians to supply Crimea.
And as big of a deal as that is, and it is, and there will be more of it in the future. It’s just the first start of a broader Ukrainian offensive. Most of these attacks are coming from places like Kherson, which are just on the other side of the Dnieper River. But there are a couple of towns further up Nikopol and Dnipro, where the Ukrainians are starting to launch attacks as well, not interrupting logistics going to Crimea, per say, but logistics going to other parts of the occupied territories.
Keep in mind, in the early days of the war, the Russians came in from the north, the east and the south and Crimeans in the south. The stuff in the north was eventually purged. It’s the stuff in the east that is now in question and in the southeast, because we have multiple provinces, that includes Donetsk and Luhansk that are hard up on the Russian border, and that provides a lot of backstop for the Russians.
Ukrainians can’t dislodge those further. But as you move south and along the coast by cities like Mariposa and Meteor Pol, that does not apply. They can only be supplied by road or rail, just like Crimea or by sea, just like Crimea. And the sea link has already effectively been cut, and the Ukrainians have already been going aggressively after the ports in that region.
And so the next stop is to do basically what they’ve done to Crimea, further to the northeast and east and east and east, until they get hard up to the Russian border, or at least into the Donetsk region, where the Russians have a few more geographic advantages. Basically, what we’re looking at here is roughly two thirds of the territory that the Russians have captured since the first war, going back to 2014, is now becoming a sandbag that the Russians cannot reliably resupply.
And while Crimea might be the literal bridge too far because it’s just too far away, you can imagine a situation where the Russians lose access to that entire southern zone, or the ability to supply it, and the Ukrainians start crossing the river, or coming across at, say, Dnipro further north, and punching through and basically excising the Russians from the entire area.
Not suggesting it. It’ll be quick, not suggesting to be easy. There’s still lots of minefields and this is still Russia we’re talking about here. But the balance of forces in this entire region is now shift. And the question isn’t will the Russian strategic position collapse? It’s how and what will the Russians do in reaction to that? There’s still a lot of options in the table.
There’s still a lot of ways where this can go horribly, horribly wrong. But the Russians have yet to come up with a way to counter the Ukrainian memory drones that are capable of selecting their own targets, which makes them. And now that those are being produced in the hundreds per day, the Russian position across the entire southern parts of the occupied territories is really falling apart.
