Return To Crimea: Securing A Beachhead
Ukraine has a real shot at liberating a vital portion of Crimea in 2024, potentially ending Putin's war by triggering a massive political crisis in Moscow.
With so much of the media filled with gloomy stories about Ukraine’s future, it probably seems like a stretch to write about seizing part of Crimea in 2024.
But major military operations are planned and executed over the course of months, with the initial decisions that structure the outcome coming well before the main event. And as I wrote last week, I see a major opportunity for Ukraine emerging this spring and summer in occupied Kherson.
Here Kyiv appears to be on the verge of gaining the ability to cut off the western-most portion of the district still occupied by the enemy, using the Dnipro-Crimea canal as a natural barrier to ruscist logistics. Ukraine is steadily shaping the conditions for a push in force across the Dnipro to the gates of Crimea.
If successful, a major landing on Crimea’s northern coast will become at least theoretically possible thanks to the geography of the area and range of modern weapons Kyiv is only now starting to receive. Though dangerous, an operation of this kind is almost certainly necessary if Ukraine hopes to liberate the peninsula thanks to Moscow’s ability to protect it from any land attack by blocking the narrow routes across the marshy Perekop Isthmus.
A marine landing offers the opportunity to outflank the force holding Perekop and ultimately cut it off from the rest of the peninsula. Success would mean that Ukraine could avoid the cost of breaking through the Surovikin Line to reach the Azov Coast. Dropping or even disabling the Kerch Strait Bridge and setting up a close drone blockade of southern Crimea will be sufficient to leave Sevastopol and the heart of Crimea cut off, a veritable island that can be left to wither on the vine.
Truth be told, simply losing a chunk of Crimea is likely enough to bring down Putin’s regime or at least cause widespread rebellions across his empire. It would represent the sort of political defeat that can’t be denied by any amount of propaganda and demonstrate the futile idiocy of Putin’s war.
That’s a chance that beats the heck out of having Ukraine play defense for a year in the hope that the support its partners offer through 2025 and 2026 equals or surpasses Moscow’s ongoing efforts to rebuild its shattered army. It is unfortunately becoming impossible to ignore the fact that many of Ukraine’s most fervent backers in the USA switched to focus on Israel after Hamas launched its horrific attack, which Israel promptly one-upped with a crime of its own while citing the Holocaust as an excuse, as usual.
A dark and dangerous delusion has gripped the foreign policy and defense establishment in the USA as well as many of its closest allies. They are moving to embrace a state of permanent war with an “Axis of Authoritarians” that will involve citizen sacrifices - up to and including tolerating substantial casualties in any military confrontation.
Imagining themselves to be the Churchills and FDRs of this century while acting just like Chamberlain, they rely on a totally mythical understanding of the Second World War that conveniently makes them the only people wise enough to lead the rest of us in this fraught new era. It’s a frankly totalitarian impulse that puts to shame all the Americans who ever whined about pandemic restrictions, pretending that the government politely asking people to stay home was a real “lockdown” like the ones people in China and to a certain extent Australia and New Zealand endured - saving a lot of lives in the process.
It is worth putting the matter bluntly: America’s leaders are lying to their people, dragging them towards a real-life Third World War not because one is inevitable but because a lot of powerful folks refuse to take responsibility for developing a just alternative. A catastrophic collision that leaves all parties exhausted and no better off in the end, just like the First World War, is where that path leads.
The only way out of this trap is to accept the small risk of Moscow launching revenge attacks on NATO along with the far greater one of Putin’s empire violently imploding and power Ukraine to swift victory. This is possible, and will not trigger anything more like a Third World War than what’s happening already: on the contrary, it’s what will ultimately prevent something much worse.
Look, China is simply not invading Taiwan if it sees a democratic world rallying around the experience of standing up for a country invaded by a neighbor it doesn’t want to be a part of. That’s what the stakes are in Ukraine. Ditch Israel, build a massive wall on the US-Mexico border, whatever: these areas don’t matter in the long run, the fights nothing compared to what will break out if Putin wins in Ukraine.
A successful landing in Crimea is critical to Ukraine winning this war. And there is still time and equipment in NATO stocks to give Kyiv the power to get the job done in 2024.
I’m not claiming that this isn’t a risky approach. It will require that Ukraine’s four Marine Corps brigades, after they seize a substantial buffer zone across the Dnipro in the coming months, get several months off in late spring and early summer to be rested, trained, and properly equipped with the kind of capabilities the United States Marine Corps has traditionally brought to the table.
At least, before the Pentagon got the bright idea to try and turn the Ryukyu island chain between Taiwan and Japan into a new Maginot Line. An approach likely to result in several isolated repeats of the spirited but tragic defense of Wake Island in 1941 because the USA has no way to supply forces that far forward in the face of overwhelming Chinese firepower.
Setting the mad strategy the USA has chosen with respect to China aside, the USMC badly needs replacement vehicles after occupying the worst parts of Iraq and has been rapidly retiring Abrams tanks and other kit Ukraine could absolutely use. Given that there is almost zero chance of the US Marine Corps launching a division-level landing on hostile shores again, giving Ukraine boats and landing craft should also be in the realm of possibility. Helicopters are the other big need, because if Ukraine can establish an air shield over the battlefield flying troops and supplies on short hops over the gulf will become possible.
Unfortunately, so far as American funding for Ukraine’s defense goes, my prior confidence that Congress would eventually agree to a package for Ukraine may have been misplaced. With Biden and Trump their parties’ prospective nominees at this point and Congress closely divided, both teams see little advantage in allowing any legislation to pass.
Fortunately, GOP House leadership is more likely to push a shutdown over social spending now that the standard year-end omnibus funding bill has been split in two, leaving defense and other services intact. It sounds as if Trump wants no progress on immigration so he can run hard on an issue that isn’t going away and where Biden is showing particular vulnerability, so separating the Ukraine and Taiwan funding from the border and Israel packages makes sense at this point even though three months ago it looked like bundling was the way. So it goes in the partisan morass. But who knows if Biden can work with the House to get it done.
Money should ultimately flow to Ukraine, and ideally a separate package could be a bit larger than the $62 billion under consideration. But when something actually passes and whether the amount will wind up trimmed down are both unknown, so it’s a good thing that European support is steadily going up. With the American media content to ignore Ukraine except when Kyiv comes under attack, a lot of the pressure needed to force a deal through has vanished.
As election season is now in full swing, US media has already begun filtering facts to suit the preferences of each outlet’s audience, doing their small part to advance the narrative of the side they sell news to while insisting that this constitutes real journalism. Unfortunately for Ukraine, a substantial chunk of its support from Americans of the more liberal persuasion was always a function of their perception that Trump was vulnerable when it came to his overall approach to Putin. If Trump shifts to a pro-Ukraine position in 2024 in order to appeal to moderate Haley-friendly conservatives in the general election and combat the oft-repeated claim that he’s beholden to Putin in some way, Biden Democrats’ attitudes towards Kyiv could swiftly change.
In American political discourse the goal is always to associate the enemy with something negative then rely on peer pressure to convince unenthusiastic voters that everything they ever cared about is at stake because the other side is bad. Implying that they’re also bad if they don’t see the light and vote the way their peers do is implicit in most political debates, politics being essentially religion in modern American life.
The trouble with the war in Ukraine is that it always risked blowing up or going terribly wrong. So from early on the Biden Administration deliberately set public expectations about what the USA could or would do very low. This is especially apparent when comparing how aggressively he responds to Israel coming under attack even when its actual survival is not truly threatened by groups like Hamas or Hezbollah.
Despite having an obligation to protect US citizens living in Ukraine when Putin was threatening to attack, Bidenworld chose to interpret the otherwise noble goal of averting World War Three as meaning zero risk to American military personnel. Those deployed in the Middle East like the victims the drone strike in Jordan this past week don’t receive the same level consideration, of course, but as that’s connected to Israel the rules are different.
Generally speaking, in mainstream American society a lie isn’t actually considered a lie if enough people agree with it. Once most Americans were encouraged to believe that World War Three means nuclear war and that equals the end of all life on Earth, the stage was set for cutting Ukraine loose if required to protect Biden’s fading political fortunes. The way elite Western thought works, if ceding Alaska to Moscow is determined to be necessary to prevent a nuclear holocaust by the proper authorities, then Alaskans had better accept that it is their duty to vote for Putin when he decides to hold elections.
Hence Biden’s shift during Zelensky’s latest visit from backing Ukraine for as long as it takes to for as long as we can. This sort of behavior is why no one really trusts the USA anymore. Trump bullies and threatens to get the best deal possible; Biden twists words to make it so that when he lies or pivots or triangulates anyone who calls him on it is gaslit, cast as either a mistaken loon or a closet backer of the other side.
This, exactly like US intelligence services releasing a stream of grim claims labeled as “declassified intelligence” insisting that Ukraine was doomed back in 2022, is part of a determined effort by a bunch of insiders to avoid Biden taking responsibility. If Moscow was bound to win anyway, people were supposed to think, why give Ukraine more than token support and risk a global war?
There is a hollow space in the heart of Western thinking about all defense matters that renders it uniquely vulnerable to any opponent willing to embrace the right approach. Because all that Western and especially American leaders truly care about is their own legacy, they will sacrifice anything and anyone without hesitation or remorse. Democracy, even the Constitution, mean absolutely nothing to them.
That’s a big part of why the strategic situation is moving in Putin’s direction right now. Many of Ukraine’s most fervent American backers in 2022 always had two faces, which is why Moscow’s propaganda remains effective across much of the world, including countries like India that are supposedly part of the grand alliance of democracies American leaders aim to manage.
When US talking heads and politicians say that Ukraine has to dig in during 2024 and build up for offensive operations in 2025, they are pressuring Ukraine to accept a frozen conflict and war without end. There are no guarantees that in a year Moscow won’t have worked out how to produce millions of drones, possibly enough to overwhelm Ukraine’s artillery advantage. There are no guarantees that China won’t move from acting like the USA did in the early years of the First World War, selling to anyone with cash, to taking greater control of its military-relevant industry and directing output exclusively to one side.
Time is not necessarily on Ukraine’s side. So far, despite ramping up economic production, Putin’s forces have not yet been able to compensate for their miserable performance in the field. Adapting the rigid personnel management system and strategic thinking inherited from the Soviet era will take years. But during the Second World War the Red Army evolved into a potent fighting force despite Stalin’s meddling - mainly relying on mass firepower. Moscow’s tanks might be junk, but their drones keep getting better.
Kyiv and Moscow are locked in adaptation race with the former’s allies effectively competing for military resources while Moscow is increasingly able to drain North Korea’s. This weakening of Kim Jong Un’s conventional forces will almost certainly result in a greater reliance on nuclear threats and tests, though this was inevitable thanks to the war in Ukraine showing how weak Soviet-style design is. South Korea’s military is potent: the North has recently given up on reunification as a political goal because it can’t possibly succeed in an invasion anymore.
The chain reactions unleashed by the USA’s failure to deter Moscow from attacking Ukraine and the humiliating defeat of Putin’s forces on the road to Kyiv will only continue. America’s foreign policy mavens lack the intellectual tools to understand what is happening or what has to happen next, endlessly trying to prop up a Postwar Order that died when the USA invaded Iraq back in 2003 instead of finishing off the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
With three American service members confirmed killed in Jordan by a drone strike this past week and more than two dozen others injured, the calls for more aggressive military action against Iran are growing. As with the campaign against Houthi forces targeting shipping in the Red Sea, there are no good options for the USA. Its overall posture and refusal to stop Israel’s failed war on Hamas mean that it now faces an effective decentralized insurgent campaign in multiple domains overstretched US forces in the Middle East are ill-prepared to cope with.
While Moscow isn’t directly involved, you can bet that Putin is laughing in whatever dacha he hides most of the time. His enemies are defending their own faulty claims to power on multiplying fronts. Probably salves the burn of his own forces proving so ruthless and inept.
All this makes a return to Crimea absolutely vital for Ukraine and all hopes of averting a bigger conflict down the line. Though before I get into an overview of how Ukraine can island hop to victory, I’ll cover some key battlefield events of the past week.
The Fronts At January’s End
For the first time in a while Moscow’s troops have managed to advance by more than a few dozen meters. On the Kupiansk and Avdiivka fronts renewed ruscist offensives have actually gained ground, though in general both successes would seem to represent opportunities for Ukraine to impose high costs at low risk.
Facing a blizzard of drone and artillery strikes before they get anywhere near Ukrainian positions, ruscist forces have to split into small groups. Often they attempt to advance without armored vehicle support. In some cases, where the soil allows, unarmed conscripts are sent to dig near Ukrainian forces, actual assault groups slipping in later.
Now that Ukraine has had a couple months to build up a series of defensive lines in the east, particularly along the Donbas front, Moscow is highly unlikely to break through. When its forces advance it’s by a few hundred meters, which in this kind of fighting essentially means that a Ukrainian squad or two lost their forward outposts.
The gap between what ruscist troops can achieve on the ground and what they would actually have to do in order to break through is yawning. A year ago it was credible to think that Moscow was fitting out a powerful formation with reserves capable of restoring a war of movement. But they never appeared in winter, rumors of delays and equipment shortfalls slowing the new formation’s deployment. When it did show up, Moscow threw it at Avdiivka in a frontal assault that mostly failed.
Putin isn’t likely to be successful in achieving even his short-term goals of occupying all of Donbas, much less the medium-term objective of reaching the key city of Dnipro, south of Kharkiv. However, given another year or two to adapt, and even Moscow will find a way to make at least limited progress on a narrow front using massed firepower and wasteful infantry assaults.
In Avdiivka this past week has seen evidence that Moscow is actively developing new ideas, even if most fail. Some reports say that tunneling was involved, others claim that orcs crawled in through the sewer system, but one way or another Ukrainian defenders in Avdiivka’s south found themselves outflanked by a push.
Coming at the same time that Moscow shifted its approach away from trying to surround the town, it now appears the plan is to pull Bakhmut 2.0 and expend troops fighting block by block. Trouble with Moscow’s apparent success, though, is that the penetration into the southern suburbs risks being cut off and annihilated by a counterattack.
Some indications are already emerging of Ukrainian troops from the 116th and 47th Mechanized Brigades counterattacking in support of the 110th and associated battalions in the center of town. UA Control Map shows recent engagements as well as an estimate of what units are fighting, and over the past year I’ve found it to correspond with other sources so I reference it frequently.
If Moscow wants to sacrifice another few tens of thousands of soldiers storming the city while the maybe ten thousand defenders inside pull back as they inflict massive loss on the attackers, so be it. Losing Avdiivka wouldn’t trigger a crisis, though I don’t expect to see it fall. Ruscist forces haven’t even managed to secure a foothold in the main suburbs after months of this being a major effort for them.
Further north in Kupiansk the situation is very different. Here the latest reports have Moscow taking one of the largely deserted frontline towns after advancing west 3-4km along a strip 4-5km wide. Moscow made a little more progress to the north as well, with attacks between running into the main concentration of Ukrainian units in the area, apparently the 14th, 32nd, 43rd, and 115th Mechanized Brigades plus reinforcements from other formations.
A few weeks ago I identified this area as one Ukraine might consider abandoning - and sowing with traps, mines, and remote cameras, of course - given the concentration of towns that can shelter ruscist forces compared to those held by Ukraine in this sector. Keeping Kupiansk out of regular artillery range is preferable, and Ukraine controls a strip of high terrain out 20km east of this logistics hub that it is understandable that Kyiv wouldn’t want to give up.
But the ability to inflict atrocious losses on orc units as they try to reach Kupiansk is an opportunity Ukraine may not pass up. Now, the ruscist breakthrough appears to have come in an area Ukraine hadn’t chosen to defend with more than lightly-equipped territorial guard force, so it is possible that commanders in the area were genuinely caught off guard and will soon counterattack.
As for me, I think that with the shortages of artillery ammunition afflicting frontline units in part thanks to the US failure to allocate more funds the Pentagon can use to draw down its stocks Kyiv is facing hard choices about where to maximize its investment of combat power. Extending the enemy’s supply lines by another 20km, making trucks and gear pass through mostly open country to get to a front line in the woods closer to the Oskil River, would seem like a reasonable tradeoff for Kupiansk coming into range of ruscist guns Ukraine needs to locate and destroy anyway.
Shortening a defensive line is rarely a bad idea, either. Right now Ukraine is in a position where it needs to be resting as many people as possible. Even expanded mobilization won’t solve the immediate problem of tired troops for many months even if they are trained on the job by getting experience in a less intense area. And regardless of Ukraine’s chosen strategy for 2024, building up a strategic reserve is crucial thanks to US instability and the EU taking time to restore its military capacity.
Moscow has naturally continued operations in more places than Avdiivka and Kupiansk, but nowhere has it scored notable successes over the past week on the ground. On the Dnipro front efforts to clear the Ukrainian bridgeheads there are ongoing but all have failed. Rumors of ruscist troops refusing to fight are growing more common, though as these generally pass through pro-Ukraine channels before being reported in English their veracity can’t be known. However, mainstream US outlets constantly talk about insurgent activity that they seem to lack any detailed knowledge of, so on the whole I take the Ukrainian community’s claims with less salt than American.
The war in the air has been the big news again this week, with Moscow’s ongoing effort to strike targets in eastern Ukraine, where Kyiv doesn’t have Patriot or SAMP/T batteries capable of taking down ballistic missiles. These attacks have been more sporadic than last year, Moscow apparently trying to maintain a reserve stockpile of long-range missiles after running dangerously low during last winter’s bombardment. It is doubtful that Moscow can produce or import more missiles than Ukraine can Patriot interceptors, so the era of people thinking Putin might be able to bombard Ukraine into submission seems to be thankfully passing.
On the flip side, Ukrainian drones have been taking advantage of the inherent vulnerability of oil refineries to strike ruscist targets across Putin’s petty empire. It was also revealed this past week that Ukraine has been able to send teams deep inside enemy territory, one destroying several heavy bombers at their airfields before being ambushed on their way home. The level of sabotage Ukraine that will become capable of as time goes by is likely underestimated in both Washington and Moscow.
Also, in an incident that continues to spark questions, Ukraine supposedly used one of its older S-300 SAMs to knock down a ruscist IL-76 transport - similar to the American C-17 - near the ruscist city of Belgorod. Moscow subsequently claimed that POWs were on board the aircraft, but at least one was confirmed to have been part of an earlier prisoner exchange and initial video shows an odd lack of bodies with the wreckage despite the aircraft hitting the ground intact, an apparent fire burning near the cockpit. It’s one of those situations where the truth is lost in the fog of war: hopefully no POWs were lost, though if they were it wouldn’t be the first time one side accidentally killed its POWs. US submariners did that a couple times in the Pacific through no fault of their own.
Moscow has been very actively using aviation over the past month despite the threat of being ambushed by Patriot systems operating closer to the border than anticipated. However, the Sukhois operating on the southern front are mainly throwing bombs across the Dnipro well upstream from the Krynky bridgehead, as if testing how far Ukraine’s ability to track and shoot down jets extends. If so, they’ll learn the answer when a couple get blasted out of the sky. Likely fearing this, aside from sporadic attacks, the jets now seem keen to avoid western occupied Kherson. Other areas, unfortunately, are now taking the brunt of the damage they can and will inflict until Ukraine is able to hit their airfields in Muscovite territory.
All in all, the news from Ukraine continues to be less grim than the majority of media sources make it out to be. The war is presently in a phase where Ukraine is once again winding up a punch while Moscow expends effort largely to prove that it hasn’t lost. This is a far cry from being on the road to winning the war, though if Ukraine’s partners once again fail to get aid to Kyiv at the speed the situation demands, the thing could drag out long enough that again becomes a risk.
Good thing that Moscow increasingly appears open to an avenue of attack it can do little about, especially if Ukraine starts to receive more long-range weapons in adequate quantities. And, of course, F-16s arrive on schedule, meaning half a dozen by March and a full squadron of 18 or so by midsummer.
To Crimea: Securing A Foothold
Ukraine’s ability to reach Crimea depends on pushing over the Dnipro in force then establishing logistics connections dense enough to support tens of thousands of soldiers and their heavy equipment beyond the river. To accomplish this in a very real sense depends on making sure the following eight questions can all be answered in the affirmative by spring:
Can Ukraine create an air denial bubble over occupied Kherson?
Can Ukraine destroy the crossings over the Crimea canal and suppress efforts to construct new ones for several months?
Does Ukraine have enough drones with sufficient range and resistance to electronic warfare to paralyze ruscist frontline positions targeted for attack?
Is Ukraine’s own electronic warfare support portable enough and dense enough to expand a signals denial bubble over the battlefield?
Are there sufficient stocks of HIMARS and 155mm ammunition to strike thousands of targets multiple times while Ukrainian forces advance?
Will boat and ferry-based logistics be enough to support four full Marine Corps brigades as they fight to establish control over the far bank of the Dnipro?
Can more permanent logistics support be set up sufficient to keep four to six mechanized brigades supplied as they break out from the bridgehead?
Does Ukraine have enough sufficiently trained and motivated troops to do the job?
Generally speaking, if Kyiv can put together the basic package of military support required by March, I’d say that April to May is when it will move. Water levels in the Dnipro should be higher, temperatures warm enough to dig trenches with shovels, and more vegetation in bloom offering cover. If two months of patient fighting Ukraine can move thousands of marines across the river and secure the towns lining the Dnipro’s southern bank, the 20km buffer needed to start running ferries and building pontoon bridges should be won in a matter of weeks.
This would allow four to six heavier brigades, ideally experienced Air Assault formations using modern gear, to push over in force and carry the offensive to the gates of Crimea by midsummer. Replacing the marines on the front line by the middle of June, over the next 2-3 months they would progressively clear ruscist forces from the territory west of the Crimea canal. Whether they continued on over as part of a broader summer counteroffensive involving another major push towards the Azov Coast farther east or simply held Moscow’s troops guarding the roads to Crimea fixed in place, the Marine Corps’ next mission could proceed.
By late August the four brigades would have been given at least two, hopefully three months to rest and prepare for the greater challenge ahead. Amphibious and airborne assaults are the most dangerous military operations, more often going terribly wrong than right. As Moscow’s initial landings at Hostomel airfield northeast of Kyiv proved even a relatively small and lightly armed but alert and motivated defender can make an air assault in particular go wrong in a hurry.
Yet to successfully seize any part of Crimea Ukraine will almost certainly have to be able to move troops and supplies by both air and water. Island hopping across the 60km bay separating Kherson from Crimea is the only possible way to outflank the powerful ruscist defenses at the Perekop Isthmus. To get the job done will require that Ukraine get a lot more boats and helicopters, too.
That Australia has chosen to spend taxpayer money to dismantle and bury a bunch of helicopters it no longer wants is irritating, even if the things are unreliable. But really, the fact that fifty or so of the thousands of UH-60 helicopters in NATO inventories aren’t already in Ukrainian hands is as much of a travesty as it taking over two years to get F-16s in country.
A fleet of modern helicopters - which can carry defensive gear to survive attacks by handheld SAMs - coupled to Ukraine’s imminent ability to shut down the airspace well beyond the front lines opens up a whole new world of opportunity for Kyiv’s defenders. Ukraine has already proven that it can send soldiers in boats to land on Crimea’s shores to attack air defense radars. It also has missiles and drones with enough range to bombard any air defense system that tries to operate too far from the cover provided by the mountains around Sevastopol. Getting helicopters flying just above the waves to and from a coastal landing area should be just doable with F-16 and Patriot support.
With southwest Kherson liberated, Ukraine would push the front lines far enough back that the Patriot system likely covering Mykolaiv to shut down the airspace over occupied Kherson could move forward several dozen kilometers. This along with F-16s using their aerial radars to mitigate any ground-based system’s blind spots would allow Ukraine to extend the air denial bubble halfway across Crimea and pose a threat to aircraft flying another fifty kilometers or so farther away on a sporadic basis.
Even better for Ukraine, the range and precision advantage accorded by HIMARS allows a launcher roving around the Kherson coastline to shoot well into Crimea. Not only would all of Moscow’s prepared defenses around Armiansk be vulnerable, but any troops trying to garrison the coastline would face attacks they could do little to hinder. Moscow has yet to prove the destruction of any HIMARS or M270 rocket launchers despite the range on Lancet drones and some of its own rocket artillery. Further, a new missile with an even longer range, up to 150km is slated to enter Ukraine’s inventories soon.
Assuming that Ukraine can produce enough one-way attack drones with ranges reaching 100km, it should be possible to so saturate the approaches to any landing zone in northwest Crimea with fires that Moscow is unable move forces to repel a major attack. If Ukrainian forces feel confident that they can seize and hold a small slice of ground including a port, even a small landing to test Moscow’s ability to respond could swiftly transform into something much bigger.
It doesn’t take an all-out D-Day style attack to score a critical victory thanks to the relative isolation of Crimea from the rest of Muscovite territory. In a situation where Ukrainian brigades are pinning ruscist troops down along the narrow neck of land connecting Crimea to the mainland and launching effective strikes across the northern half, even seizing a single resort town on the coast can transform the situation provided that Ukrainian troops on the ground are adequately supported and supplied.
The Crimean coastline facing Kherson is lined with small resort towns and even boasts a small port located out of regular artillery range from the major bases near Armiansk. Even better, the westernmost thumb of Crimea is hilly and the straightest road to Sevastopol passes over water features, meaning that the destruction of a few key bridges renders it dangerously isolated. Having lost the ability to control the western Black Sea and in this scenario facing a situation where aircraft can’t fly much beyond central Crimea, Moscow would not be able to reliably interdict Ukrainian boats and helicopters ferrying troops and supplies.
If Ukraine manages to surprise Moscow and seize even a single town, unless the ruscists react quickly and without regard for casualties such a beachhead could be replicated and expanded over the course of a few days in the same way the bridgehead over the Dnipro is right now. Certainly Moscow has a lot of troops in Crimea overall, but if they can’t reach the landing zone to repel the attack Ukrainian troops will dig in deep. Once substantial numbers of short-range drones are shipped in, Ukrainian troops will see any attack coming and break it up with accurate fire from both the Kherson coast and the beachhead.
Ultimately, the ability to adequately supply a beachhead and conduct troop rotations is the key limiting variable in this scenario. How many boats and helicopters are available to bring in a wave of troops and their kit then keep them fighting determines the size of the landing force even setting aside the concerns for the sustainability of the effort over time. For safety you aren’t putting more than a squad of 10-12 in one helicopter or boat, and for every one carrying people at least another has to carry supplies. To land a thousand marines at once obviously requires a lot of transport - 50 helicopters and a couple hundred boats, easily.
That’s enough to seize a town, maybe even the part of Chornomorskoe with a working port, if the enemy is taken by surprise. But that thousand will have to be joined by several others to fan out and establish a viable defensive perimeter to say nothing of clearing the town of ruscist troops and keeping the civilian population calm. Ukraine will ultimately need to be able to build up a sufficient force capable of establishing and holding a roughly 30km stretch of ground to create a sustainable foothold at the western edge of Crimea. That probably three Marine Corps brigades with upwards of 15,000 troops by late 2024.
The thing about Ukraine’s prowess with naval drones is that this has the potential to make supplying a large fighting force across a small water body infinitely easier than was once the case. The sea is a relatively simple environment for an autonomous boat to navigate, and large numbers can make it impossible for Moscow to find and destroy them all even if it solves the problem of getting close enough to hunt and attack the things. In addition, drone boats can serve as signal repeaters to extend the effective control range of other drones in the face of jamming.
Crewed ships will probably always be a necessity for long-distance ocean travel because of all that can go wrong on a complex machine like a ship. But for simple jobs where the thing can come home for repairs and maintenance every day or so, drone and robotic ships are the way to go. They will soon make coastal regions death for crewed warships the same way the grey zone between the front lines is for unprotected troops and vehicles. This won’t change warfare as much as some people imagine, but it will dramatically alter the daily rhythms of people close to the front line. Frankly, I am coming to the view that it is pointless to conduct major ground offensives where it isn’t possible to largely isolate a target area from support.
This wouldn’t be nearly enough to evict ruscist forces from Crimea entirely, of course. But success would serve two important functions: prove the weakness of Putin’s regime in terms few could deny and upend the obvious ruscist plan for defending Crimea by bottling up Ukrainian attacks in the marshes to the north.
Nobody takes and holds Crimea without securing the Perekop Isthmus, but achieving this through frontal assault is not ideal. Far better is to try and cut off the occupiers from the rest of the Muscovite logistics network, with the natural follow-on operation to securing a beachhead in western Crimea being a push across the northern lowlands to the Azov Coast. How soon this could be accomplished is a matter of how fast ruscist morale cracks. Regardless, once fighting is taking place on Crimea proper it calls into question every assumption anyone has ever made about the power of Putin’s regime.
Assuming the Kerch Strait bridge is rendered inoperable this year, making Moscow reliant on heavily guarded ferries landing in Crimea’s eastern reaches just to keep Sevastopol fed should come close to paralyzing orc logistics across the peninsula. Any success Ukraine has to the north of Perekop or near Melitopol will threaten to cut off the grouping of forces there, too.
Though it is possible that this will be necessary if Putin’s regime is more resilient than hoped or someone worse succeeds him, delivering a humiliating and potentially crippling blow on the Crimea front will only aid Ukraine’s future efforts. Inability to protect Crimea would demonstrate unacceptable weakness and the failure of Moscow’s military effort: eventually Ukraine would work out how to win in the trenches.
And depending on how bad the war gets before it’s over, a triumphant Ukraine could easily find itself in a position where establishing secure buffer zones in Rostov and Belgorod to prevent new aggression from Moscow could morph into something even worse for the ruscist cause: a loss of home territory its depleted military can do nothing about. Though Moscow will still have its nuclear arsenal, using a nuke to force the other side to leave your territory when it lacks its own nukes still represents a massive and humiliating political defeat if you’d originally tried to conquer them.
What does Crimea need to stand a chance of making this work and potentially ending the Ukraine War in 2024? The right equipment, training, and organization.
Overall, success can be seen as a matter of answering in the affirmative these questions:
Is the fight to liberate southwest Kherson over by midsummer?
Can Ukraine establish an air denial bubble stretching at least 50km into Crimea’s northwest?
Is Ukraine able to establish a responsive fire support system able to hit any target identified by a soldier on the ground in minutes?
Does Ukraine have enough transport and supply capacity to sustain a landing in force?
Can Ukraine achieve surprise, seize a port then a defensible perimeter, and hold out against local counterattacks while breaking up reserves Moscow will deploy?
Over the coming months it is absolutely possible to help Ukraine get to yes on all. In a future piece, I’ll write about how Ukraine could take and expand its bridgehead in more specific detail.
For the present, I can only hope that Ukraine’s real allies recognize the need and potential to try and bring the war to a head this year. As with a bacterial infection or novel virus, Putin’s empire can’t be left to linger, lest it evolve.