Hundreds of burned-out and charred wrecks of tractor trailers, tanker trucks, and assorted military transports line the shoulders of Russia’s chief supply route to Crimea and occupied southern Ukraine from Russia proper. Mile after mile of vehicle carcasses lie overturned and jackknifed in roadside ditches, supply transports that never reached their destination. This 390-mile stretch—the most direct route from the Russian supply hub of Rostov-on-Don to the Black Sea region—has earned itself the moniker “Highway of Death,” assigned to it by Ukrainian and Russian soldiers.
Since early April, wave after wave of Ukrainian drones have incapacitated the critical coastal route along the Sea of Azov and taken out Crimea’s northern bridges across the Chongar Strait. Ukrainian strikes have choked maritime supply routes and disrupted rail services, leaving the only practical route to Crimea the Kerch Bridge in easternmost Crimea. It is being hit, too, and now handles a fraction of previous traffic—most of which is exiting Crimea. Late June has daily seen miles of cars backed up on the Kerch Bridge trying to leave Crimea.
Hundreds of burned-out and charred wrecks of tractor trailers, tanker trucks, and assorted military transports line the shoulders of Russia’s chief supply route to Crimea and occupied southern Ukraine from Russia proper. Mile after mile of vehicle carcasses lie overturned and jackknifed in roadside ditches, supply transports that never reached their destination. This 390-mile stretch—the most direct route from the Russian supply hub of Rostov-on-Don to the Black Sea region—has earned itself the moniker “Highway of Death,” assigned to it by Ukrainian and Russian soldiers.
Since early April, wave after wave of Ukrainian drones have incapacitated the critical coastal route along the Sea of Azov and taken out Crimea’s northern bridges across the Chongar Strait. Ukrainian strikes have choked maritime supply routes and disrupted rail services, leaving the only practical route to Crimea the Kerch Bridge in easternmost Crimea. It is being hit, too, and now handles a fraction of previous traffic—most of which is exiting Crimea. Late June has daily seen miles of cars backed up on the Kerch Bridge trying to leave Crimea.
This stranglehold on Crimea has consequences beyond inconveniencing Russian tourists traveling to the peninsula for summer holidays. Ukraine has triggered critical fuel and ammunition shortages in Russian-occupied territories in the south around Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. On June 11, in a single strike, Ukraine’s 1st Separate Assault Regiment torched ammunition and fuel bound for positions in Zaporizhzhia—along with up to 50 military vehicles, loaded and ready to roll. The Crimea offensive is thus acutely hampering Russia’s ability to execute military operations in its southern theaters.
Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s oil-refining works across the country have exacerbated the crisis by reducing Russia’s refining capacity by about a quarter and creating supply shortfalls across the country. For days now, blackouts have paralyzed Sevastopol, Crimea’s largest city. On June 21, the governor of Russian-occupied Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, suspended gasoline sales to civilians and announced that only state and government agencies would receive fuel.
“Ukraine halting fuel supplies to the southern front,” explained Serhii Kuzan, head of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center, a Ukrainian think tank, “paralyzes Russian military logistics and isolates Russian forces. There’s already fuel shortages in the temporarily occupied territories. This restricts the use of military equipment and negatively impacts logistics: It complicates troop rotations, the evacuation of wounded, and supply of weapons.”
In May, Ukraine’s defense ministry announced that a strategic “logistics lockdown” would turn Crimea from a peninsula into an island isolated from mainland Russia. The aim of the systematic, multipronged campaign is to strangle every supply route feeding Russia’s forces across occupied southern Ukraine. Crimea serves as a critical logistics hub and rear-area base for the entire southern front. All Russian forces in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions receive supplies and sustainment through either the land routes or Crimea. Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov stated that Ukraine wants to cut off the peninsula from Russian supply while destroying critical infrastructure, with the goal of making the Russian occupation “wither on the vine.”
This will enable Ukraine to go on a counteroffensive and take back territory. Thus far, however, this hasn’t happened, although Russia’s much-hyped summer offensive hasn’t gone anywhere, either.
“Ukraine is shaping the battlefield,” explained George Barros of the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War. “They’re turning the Russians’ front lines brittle. They may leave Russians in this vulnerable position for some time, perhaps for months, and then counterattack.”
The weapons wreaking this havoc are largely medium-range drones—cheap, domestically produced, and capable of striking targets nearly 200 miles from the front. Ukraine’s newly designed models include the FP-2 and the Behemoth, the latter with a cruising speed of 110 miles per hour and capable of carrying a 154-pound warhead, according to CNN. Their range extends Russian supply lines by forcing military logistics to bypass the most cost-efficient routes within the strike zone. Russia is thus compelled to reroute convoys through circuitous detours, largely from the north.
“This drone campaign didn’t emerge overnight,” said Maksym Beznosiuk, a Poland-based associate fellow at the think tank GLOBSEC. “Ukraine’s systematic effort to degrade Russian air defenses in Crimea earlier this year, including radar systems and surface-to-air missile batteries, enables the deeper drone strikes. This has also reduced Russia’s ability to shield military facilities across the Crimean Peninsula and created new opportunities for follow-on strikes against logistics targets.”
Also, by “exhausting Crimea,” Kuzan said, Ukraine exacerbates “the already serious public discontent in occupied Crimea.” Strikes on Simferopol’s power station and Sevastopol’s substation on June 24 cut power across large parts of Crimea. The peninsula declared a state of emergency in the face of power outages, fuel rationing, and transport restrictions. The outages have knocked out water pressure in parts of the city, too, and elsewhere on the peninsula.
This ties down ever more Russian resources in Crimea. Ukraine’s “shifting Russia’s attention and powers,” Kuzan said. “We know that larger contingents of FSB personnel [Russia’s principal domestic security] are in Crimea, probably to deal with popular dissent. There are more soldiers, too, for example, manning small air defense systems that are diverted from Russia and the front line to secure the [supply] highways. And Russia is constantly testing new ways to supply Crimea like building small pontoon bridges.”
The lockdown isn’t total, and Ukraine doesn’t want it to be, Barros argued. “There are still ways to get in and out of Crimea, and it’s possibly happening by design,” he said. “If you completely trap someone and you block off all regress routes, then it changes the calculus for the adversary. Generally, you’ll want to leave an egress so that an adversary has an incentive to leave as opposed to dig in their heels and fight to the end.”
Crimea is a priceless geostrategic asset to Russia for more reasons than one. Russia boasts that the peninsula is its “unsinkable aircraft carrier,” functioning as a platform to project air and naval power across the entire Black Sea region, including the Kerch Strait, which connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov. Sevastopol is the main port of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, which Moscow has used to strangle Ukraine’s grain and trade exports. And Russia regularly launches missile attacks from the peninsula on Mykolaiv and Odesa, the latter just 200 miles away.
By threatening this Russian fortress, Ukraine is sending a message to the Russian people that President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the peninsula did not deliver the security that he promised in 2014.
