By Dan Peleschuk<\/p>\n
KYIV, June 10 (Reuters) – Ukrainian forces struck the Russian-occupied port of Mariupol, Kyiv said on Wednesday, the latest in a series of drone attacks on logistics across a critical stretch of Moscow-held southern \u200cUkraine connecting Russia to Crimea.<\/p>\n
The attack on the port, which Ukraine’s military said plunged the site into a \u200cblackout, followed two strikes earlier this week on a bridge linking the Russian-occupied Kherson region to the Black Sea peninsula, which Moscow seized in 2014.<\/p>\n
The \u200battacks are part of a mounting Ukrainian campaign to target Russian logistics far behind the front line of Moscow’s four-year-long war, an effort analysts have said is helping slow its war machine.<\/p>\n
The land bridge across southern Ukraine is a critical supply corridor for Russian forces as they attempt to grind forward along parts of the 1,200-km (746-mile) front line, amid signs of new Ukrainian resistance.<\/p>\n
KEY PORT, BRIDGE \u200cDAMAGED<\/p>\n
Kyiv’s drone forces said Ukrainian units had \u2060struck several key facilities at the Mariupol port, including energy and maintenance infrastructure, in an attack that has “significantly limited” the city’s capacity as a logistics hub.<\/p>\n
A video posted on Wednesday by Ukraine’s 1st \u2060Azov Corps, which also participated in the operation, showed drone footage of ships, power stations and other structures coming under attack.<\/p>\n
“Electrical substations, radar equipment, repair infrastructure, the control tower, and fuel and lubricant storage tanks were hit,” it said in a statement, adding that a \u200bsanctioned \u200bcargo vessel was also damaged.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Ukraine’s 1st Separate Assault Regiment \u200bsaid it had launched drone attacks on June 7 \u200cand 9 that struck the Chonhar bridge, one of two over-water crossings connecting Crimea to either Russian-occupied territory or Russia itself.<\/p>\n
“We see all movements and totally control the enemy’s repair works,” it said on Facebook. “We are ready to make our long-range adjustments at any moment.”<\/p>\n
Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-installed governor of the occupied part of Ukraine’s Kherson region, said on Telegram that the bridge had been hit twice and traffic had been suspended.<\/p>\n
Earlier in the war, Ukraine repeatedly targeted the bridge across the Kerch \u200cStrait connecting western Crimea to Russia’s Krasnodar region.<\/p>\n
WAR DYNAMICS SHIFTING<\/p>\n
This week’s attacks \u200bcome after months of shifting battlefield dynamics in which Moscow’s momentum has \u200bslowed to a crawl, partly a result of Ukrainian \u200bstrikes on critical logistical targets, including on oil and military-industrial infrastructure inside Russia.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian forces have also \u200cstaged successful counterattacks on parts of the front line.<\/p>\n
In \u200ba statement, Ukrainian open-source analysis group \u200bDeepState said Kyiv’s “blockade” of Russian supply lines across the occupied south could further hamstring Moscow’s battlefield efforts.<\/p>\n
The attacks also send a powerful message, it added.<\/p>\n
“The Defense Forces have demonstrated… the capabilities with which they can control everything \u200bthat moves in the southern part of \u200cthe occupied territory, in particular, from Crimea.”<\/p>\n
Writing on the Telegram messaging app, Russian war blogger Yuri Baranchik said \u200bUkraine’s stepped-up strikes on logistics across the area show that Kyiv had “caught up” with Moscow’s capabilities.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Dan \u200bPeleschuk; Editing by Alex Richardson, Thomas Derpinghaus and Bill Berkrot)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Dan Peleschuk KYIV, June 10 (Reuters) – Ukrainian forces struck the Russian-occupied port of Mariupol, Kyiv said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[426,531,2062,38,623,763,26],"class_list":["post-4082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-crimea","tag-drone-attacks","tag-logistics","tag-moscow","tag-russian-forces","tag-southern-ukraine","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}