Ukraine’s southern forces wage a slow campaign to wear the Russians down

Ukraine’s southern forces wage a slow campaign to wear the Russians down

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Until recently, Russian artillery pounded Ukrainian forces on the front lines of the war in the south.

But today, just 3 miles from the Russian line, incoming shells have become far less frequent since Ukrainian forces started taking out Russian ammunition depots and bridges in the Kherson region and Crimea.

“There’s about half as much incoming as three or four weeks ago,” says Yevhen, a Ukrainian infantry squad commander, who hasn’t fired his rifle in more than a month.

This is what Ukraine’s offensive to retake occupied territory in the south of the country looks like: not a dramatic ground assault, but a series of artillery strikes designed to cut Russian supply lines and isolate Russian troops in the region.

Using U.S.-supplied long-range Himars rocket systems, Ukrainian forces have disabled several bridges across the Dnipro River and the smaller Inhulets River in recent weeks. The Ukrainians have also taken out a series of ammunition depots, including one this week in Crimea, the peninsula in southern Ukraine that Moscow seized in 2014 and has used as a staging ground for its assault on the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. [Continue reading…]

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