Railroad Troops - 2022 SVO Ukraine
Russia has begun construction of a rail line to sustain shipments directly obtained from Taganrog and Rostov-on-Don inside Russia to frontline depots used by occupation forces in Ukraine’s south, Stefan Korshak reported in the Kyiv Post 27 September 2023. A key link in the project was repairs to a bridge across the Kalmius River, near the village Hranitne, located about 45 kilometers northeast of Mariupol. Retreating Ukrainian troops blew up the bridge in March 2022.
The new line would be an alternative to the bridge crossing the Kerch Strait into the occupied Crimea peninsula, which was blown up by a Ukrainian truck bomb on 28 October 2022. That attack halted rail traffic across the bridge for four months, A truck bomb launched by Ukrainian special operations teams on 28 October 2022 halted rail traffic over the bridge for more than four months, and weakened bridge supports sufficiently to prevent pasaage of heavily-loaded trains.
An adviser to the exiled Ukrainian mayor of Mariupol, Petro Andriushchenko, said in a telegram that "If successful, this will allow the existing Mariupol – Aslanovo – Kalchyk – Volnovakha line to be connected directly to Taganrog and Rostov-on-Don. In practice, this is not only a global solution to the issue of military and civilian logistics, but also a radical reduction in dependence on railroad traffic across the Crimean bridge".
He had no doubt that the occupiers will be able to build a new railway with a distance of 50 km and a railway bridge across the Kalmius River. “The question is how long will it take them to do this? Approximately, maybe several months, but who knows, maybe they will speed up,” says the analyst. “Thus, it turns out that the occupiers can make two isolated logistics islands: the first - Crimea and Melitopol, and the second - Taganrog, Mariupol and Volnovakha. But this still will not solve the problem of their logistics, because the Ukrainian Armed Forces will be able to cut off this corridor from Donbass to Crimea. That is, the occupiers will be able to create dirty tricks and unpleasant things for us, but in some places it still won’t save them,” summed up Ivan Kirichevsky.
As to why Russian forces were bogged down or forced to retreat in some parts of Ukraine in early 2022, former CIA director and commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, David Petraeus said that Russia's "Achilles' heel" was "their lack of what might be termed expeditionary logistics. In other words, once they are away from a rail system or a port, their logistics are very, very modest." He said that the Russian armed forces are tied to their railway system in Russia. "Once they leave it, as we saw, they are wholly inadequate in the provisions that they provided for their forces when it comes to food, fuel, and ammunition, medical evacuation, and all the rest of it," he said.
An explosive device derailed a Russian freight train in a region bordering Ukraine for a second straight day 02 May 2023 ahead of an expected counteroffensive by Kyiv. Russian Railways said in a statement around 20 wagons had come off the track, adding the derailment had been caused by "unauthorised interference," without providing further details. A train derailed in the same region on 01 May 2023 after an explosion, the local governor said. Bryansk region governor Alexander Bogomaz said the derailment was caused by an "explosive device" on the tracks. There had been many reports of sabotage on railways in Russia since Moscow launched its Ukraine offensive, but this week was the first time officials confirmed attacks on this scale.
The railway route “Volnovakha – Tokmak – Dzhankoy” is a rolling road by which the Russians can still quickly deliver supplies to the front. When the Ukrainian defenders de-occupy the city of Tokmak in the Zaporizhzhia region, the southern group of the Russian Armed Forces will find itself in a difficult logistical situation. So, there will be a serious battle for Tokmak, the Russians are already patching holes in their supply. Military analyst Oleksiy Hetman stated this 25 September 2023 on the air of FREEDOM TV channel.
“I would not like to say that Tokmak is more important than Bakhmut, because it would not be very correct in relation to the people who are fighting there. But Tokmak – there is the railway “Volnovakha – Tokmak – Dzhankoy”, with a branch to the south, to Melitopol. This is a rolling road, in military terminology – these are roads that run parallel to the front line. These roads are even specially made, they may not exist, but during such hostilities, when the group is without movement for a while, a road is immediately made in any way, so that it is possible to quickly transport everything necessary to some areas of the front. Promptly, precisely for this purpose,” he said.
The analyst clarified that this “Volnovakha-Dzhankoy” railway through Tokmak is not just a rolling road, but one of the two main roads, logistical routes, along which the Russians can not only deliver something, but also move large groups of troops, a significant amount of equipment, artillery , in particular missiles.
“They used to transport Calibres on this railway. And Tokmak is one of the centers through which this railway passes. There was already a lot of information about the fact that no one will storm the front of Tokmak when we can surround it, we will cut this road and there are no other railways there, there are no railway bypasses either. Then it will be possible to say that the Crimean group of Russians, the southern group, “Dnipro” they call it, the Kherson group will remain only with the resource it has now as a reserve. Any garrison, any military unit has a certain stock of everything necessary for conducting hostilities. This reserve, depending on the size of the group, if it is a brigade or an army, is calculated for a month, two, three, if you save a lot,” says Hetman.
According to him, after the Defense Forces of Ukraine destroy the Crimean Bridge, the entire southern group of Russians will be unable to supply everything necessary there. “Until we reach the coast of the Sea of Azov, there will remain a few highways, but they will also be under our artillery control, but on the railway, where you can launch a train of 20, 30, 50 cars and three, four, five, even 10 cars , — this will not give the Russians the opportunity to provide the southern, Kherson and Crimean groups with everything they need. Therefore, there will be a very serious battle for Tokmak on the part of the Russians. They are already transferring there, pulling out all their reserves from wherever they can,” the military analyst added.
At the same time, he emphasized that the occupying army has no possibility to add reserves from the depths of the Russian Federation, “no matter what anyone says.” According to Hetman, the Russians are moving troops along the front line. “For example, two divisions moved to the Tokmak direction – the 76th amphibious division from the Kupyansk direction and the 7th mining and amphibious division from the Kherson direction. Although part of the 76th division is already moving from the Tokmak direction to the Bakhmut direction. That is, they patch holes, they call it “Trishkin kaptan”. That is, somewhere they patched the patch, but by cutting a hole somewhere else. Bakhmut is also of great political and emotional significance for us and for Russians. Moreover, the president of our country said that we will release him in the near future. But the Volnovakh direction is also very important, the entire Southern direction – Berdyanskyi, Melitopolskyi, Volnovaskyi directions – these are precisely the battles for this railway, which supplies everything necessary to the Russian troops. If you look at their fortifications, which they built, except for Tokmak, which they fortified in a circle, then, by and large, all their first, second and third lines of defense run parallel to this railway,” he said.
The Russian occupiers, the analyst noted, are not fighting for some settlements there. “Our military perfectly understands that this railway is, in fact, the key to Crimea, and the Russians will fight for it. All these fortifications of theirs are built parallel to this road, they protect the road, not some settlement. If, not only according to the reports of the American Institute for the Study of War, but also according to our official channels, we have already passed the third line of their defense, then, by and large, the field is clear. They will also fight there, resist, but there will be no such fortifications. It can be expected that we will take this railway under control very soon, and when we control the logistics routes of the Russians, then Crimea will remain for two – maximum three months and that’s it. Then they simply will have nothing to fight for. They won’t be worse off, they just won’t have anything. This is very important,” summed up Oleksiy Hetman.
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