By Tecla Squillaci

Aug 31

📌Mike Martin is a veteran and visiting fellow in the War Studies Department of King’s College London. Martin said there is a possibility of a potential breakthrough for the Ukrainian forces.
The key, Martin wrote, is forcing Russian troops out of a large area west of Melitopol, which they have occupied since the first months of the war.

📌Melitopol, in the Zaporizhzhia region, is located in the center of a large area called the “land bridge”. This land bridge connects the Russian-occupied Crimea peninsula to the rest of Ukraine.

📌 Melitopol is a key target in the counter-offensive and US intelligence officials have reportedly assessed that Ukraine cannot capture it.

📌📌Ukraine still needs a near-term victory “that keeps alive the narrative that supplying Ukraine is the right thing to do,” Martin wrote. Martin’s idea is to force a withdrawal from a large area presumably within Ukraine’s reach.

Ukraine’s rapid breakthrough last fall at Kharkiv was achieved “not by fighting the Russians at every step, but by cutting off their supplies and forcing them to retreat,” he wrote.

According to his analysis, Ukraine may instead try to separate the city and a large swath of territory west of it from the rest of Russian control by targeting strategic locations that serve it, namely the city of Tokmak, which it has an important railway junction. ; the two highways connecting Crimea to the Ukrainian mainland; and the Kerch Bridge, which connects Crimea to Russia.

📌Ukraine also needs to be able to block the M14 highway that spans the extreme south of the country, supplying Melitopol from the east, he said.