In its recent strikes on Russian landing ships, Ukraine is pursuing not to disable any potential Russian landing operations but to cut off Russian supplies to its occupation forces via sea when Ukraine cuts off the railway, officer in the Israeli Defense Forces and military analyst Yigal Levin has said.
The latest such strike happened on 13 September, when Ukraine conducted a missile attack on a ship repair yard in Sevastopol and badly damaged two ships there: the Russian landing ship Minsk and submarine Rostov-on-Don. One before that, on 4 August, took out the landing ship Olenegorsky Gornyak in Novorossiysk.
The assaults on landing ships are not because Ukraine fears a Russian landing operation on Ukraine’s seaside, as it is too formidable a task, but rather to create a 2AD-zone (anti-access and area denial zone) for the Russians when Ukraine’s army cuts off their railway connection through Tokmak collapses, Yigal Levin writes.
The landing ships are intended to save Russian logistics when this main supply channel to their army group around Berdiansk and Mariupol collapses, as they could supply fuel and heavy equipment to it via the sea through Mariupol, Levin believes. It is because of this that the Russians are repairing the railway line in the Mariupol port, he adds.
“If Ukraine manages to cut the transport artery that runs through Tokmak (it is hardly used anymore because of the approaching front) and deprives the Russian Black Sea Fleet of transport capabilities, this will, in fact, create a kind of A2AD zone (anti-access and area denial) for Russian logistics. And without fuel (and regular supply of fuel, medical supplies, equipment, etc.), it is very difficult to fight, to put it mildly,” the expert sums up.
Analyst: Ukraine constantly conducts Israeli-style raids into Russian territory
