HISTORY

Air war

over Ukraine

Photo: Maxar Technologies

The hot autumn

Text: Miro Barič

In the previous section, we dealt mainly with the Ukrainian offensives in Kherson and Kharkiv regions. Furthermore, in the period

from October 1 to November 1, a great deal happened in Ukraine.

In addition to the ongoing ground counter-offensive, there have

been attacks on the Kerch bridge linking occupied Crimea with

Russia and on the naval base at Sevastopol. Russia, for its part,

is attacking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure from afar, but is pulling up short on the front.

We left operations in Ukraine in the previous part of this series when the Armed

Forces of Ukraine entered Lyman in the

northeast of the country on October 1.

After several successful operations in the

Kharkiv region, Ukrainian troops paused

for a while to replenish forces, resupply

and, last but not least, to collect captured

equipment left behind by fleeing enemies.

This allowed the Russian side time to consolidate as well and fighting in the region

thus continued with alternating success

throughout November along the road between Svatove and Kreminna.

Stiff fighting also took place over Bakhmut

in the Donetsk region, which the Russians

have been trying in vain to capture since

August. A Wagner’s mercenary group is

very active there. The Russian advance has

been extremely slow, despite great efforts.

On Monday October 24, the Ukrainians

even launched a successful local counter-attack and temporarily pushed the

20

INFO Eduard

Russians out of the factories on the eastern

outskirts of the city. Most of this, however,

took place in the south of Ukraine. On the

very next day after the liberation of Lyman, on the opposite side of the front line,

Ukrainian troops also moved in Kherson

Oblast. They attacked from two directions

on October 2, and along the Dnieper River

they managed to break through the front

lines. In two days, they advanced about 40

km and liberated dozens of villages. From

several of them Russians preferred to withdraw as they were in danger of being

surrounded.

Putin’s pride down

The Kerch Bridge explosion early on Thursday morning, October 6, posed major

problems for supplies to Russian troops

in southern Ukraine. This bridge from Russia to occupied Crimea was under construction between 2016 and 2019 and was

opened personally by Russian President

Putin. The road section is 16.9 km long and

the railway section is 18.1 km long. To this

day, it is unclear what exactly happened to

the bridge. According to the Russian side,

a truck that was crossing towards Crimea

exploded. They documented this with both

video and X-ray footage showing a semi-trailer loaded with explosives. However,

two things do not fit in the Russian version

– the different number of axles of the truck

on the video and on the X-ray image, plus

the logic does not fit, either – why would

anyone let onto a bridge a truck in which

they see explosives when they check for

it? And then the Kremlin is surprised that

nobody believes their fairy tales ...

According to another version, a naval drone exploded under the bridge. Ukraine,

however, does not claim responsibility

for the attack. Anyway, the huge explosion caused two spans of the road bridge

at the site of the blast to collapse into the

sea, and a little further on, tremors caused

a third span to fall as well. At the time of

the explosion, on the adjacent railroad

bridgethere was a train of tankers, which

began to burn. It took several hours to extinguish the ensuing fire. The rails melted

in the process and the bridge structure

was also severely affected by the fire.

Although Russia claimed that the bridge

was only lightly damaged and traffic was

immediately restored, the opposite is true.

Half of the road bridge in one direction

stayed intact, but only cars were allowed

December 2022