And now we can begin to see where. They definitely stop at Svatove, east of the Oskil River. This is very important to them because Svatove controls the last good supply route from Belgorod in Russia to their forces further south. Live updates on the Ukraine war But the Ukrainians are now able to attack the P66 highway that runs south from Svatove to Kremenna, on the northern threshold of Donbas. So the Russians are also trying hard to regain their positions in Kremenna, because if they can’t, then Lysychansk and Severodonetsk – remember them? – could be surrounded by north. So the next phase of this battle in the northeast is shaping up. In the southwest, the battle for Kherson continues. Kherson is the most important strategic objective and Russian troops are fighting hard to hold it. It appears that the Ukrainians are working to push Russian forces elsewhere in the region back into the city itself. And then it probably wears them out. Russia’s response to these setbacks has been to launch more missile attacks against civilian targets and infrastructure. The dam and hydroelectric plants in Kryvyi Rih were repeatedly attacked. There is military logic to this for Russia. The dam break floods the Inhulets River and this destroys some of the pontoon bridges that the Ukrainians depend on now that they have crossed the Inhulets. The dam is being repaired quickly, the pontoon bridges are being replaced, and Russian attacks on the dam will likely continue. It’s all part of the logistics battle – without which front line battles will always fail. Read more: Bodies of Ukrainian troops ‘thrown like dogs into ditch’ Russia will do everything it can to end war in Ukraine ‘as soon as possible’, says Vladimir Putin And when it comes to logistics and support, some of the headlines are pretty dramatic. The Russians have lost more than 6,000 pieces of major equipment – the Ukrainians only about a quarter of that. But these heavy Russian losses are still generally small in terms of the amount of equipment available. While Ukraine’s losses are a greater percentage of what they can ultimately throw into battle. This highlights two fundamental issues. One is that Ukraine will need Western military equipment for as long as it fights this war. And two, it means we are witnessing the return of industrial-scale warfare to Europe – for the first time in generations.
