Have the Russians Restarted the Odessa Offensive?
keep your maps handy
As we covered here last month before the debacle at the gates of Kyiv knocked the Russians off their stride, the supply lines from NATO territory into the southwest of Ukraine and on to Odessa are incredibly delicate.
Then northern route is an iffy 2-lane surface road that goes through Moldova and too close to the Transdniester.
If you need anything heavy from the Danube ports to Odessa, you will need to go over the Zatoka bridge.
When the Russian Navy shelled the coast there, I was frankly surprised the road and more importantly the rail line across the bridge at Zatoka was left intact, but they were. Things then got quite on that front, but not anymore.
I'm not a bridge engineer, but it is clear the surface road is gone, and the structural integrity of the structure is probably not ready for a train any time soon.
Perhaps the Russian's OPLAN did not see this war taking this long and they didn't see the need to take out this bridge as it would be needed to economic reasons once this part of Novorossiya & Bessarabia were back in the fold.
Well, they have a different war now and it is back to fundamentals.
Take out the bridges and Odessa is the key to the Black Sea between Crimea and Constantinople.
Gee, isn't there some other bridge over to the east a bit, something long and out in the open between Crimea and Russia, something which I have been surprised has not yet been the target of any eastbound kinetics?
From what I can see, there are two rail lines from the North, in addition to the roadway, that would deliver goods from Poland. It would also seem that there is probably a lot of barge availability to ferry things across the mouth of the estuary where the bridge is located. There are options. We do need to get some NATO hulls in the area to protect shipping, though.