In recent times, the Russian Army has increased its use of low-cost long-range precision attack weapons to attack railway transport centers, transporting weapons and reinforcements to Ukraine’s battlefields.
Although both houses of the US Congress have passed a $61 billion aid bill for Ukraine, this still does not satisfy the wishes of Kiev’s leadership. President Zelensky continues to call on Western countries to provide Ukraine with as many weapons as possible, to quickly equip their new units about to enter the battlefield.
President Zelensky said at the Ramstein Conference that Ukraine is forming a number of new brigades, and they really need weapons right now; While Ukraine has the best fighting units, they cannot defeat Russia without modern weapons.
In addition, the President of Ukraine also called on Western countries to buy as many military products as possible from Ukrainian companies and then “reversely” supply these products to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
To put it bluntly from Kiev’s perspective, “Use your money to buy our weapons, then give us the weapons you bought for free.” But from a pragmatic point of view, is the West vulnerable to being taken advantage of by Ukraine?
In recent days, a large number of military vehicles carrying US weapons have arrived in Poland from various warehouses in Europe. Currently, Poland can be considered the center for transferring Western aid to Ukraine. To prevent the transportation of these weapons, Russia has increased attacks on the transportation network in Ukraine.
According to Russian website Avia.pro, around 6:30 a.m. on April 25, the Russian Army suddenly conducted a series of attacks on railway infrastructure in Smela, Cherkasy region, central Ukraine. The attack caused a fire to burn throughout the entire area.
Authorities there said Ukraine’s air defense forces shot down many Russian missiles, but “falling missile fragments” damaged ground infrastructure. It is known that the railway was transporting reinforcements of the Ukrainian Army to the front line at that time.
At the same time, a video began circulating on social networks on April 25 showing that a Russian missile hit a Ukrainian high-speed military train. According to verification by Russian media, the video was filmed in the village of Sinelnikovo, Dnepropetrovsk region.
At that time, a Ukrainian Army train was moving at high speed on the tracks through the village, when it was suddenly attacked by Russian precision missiles. A section of rolling stock and locomotives were completely destroyed, along with a large number of soldiers and weapons on board.
Dnipropetrovsk is an important railway hub in Ukraine. Routes to western Ukraine, the Kiev region, the Donbass battlefield, Odessa, Nikolaev and Kherson all pass through here.
In Dnipropetrovsk there are also weapons repair factories and companies producing new weapons are also concentrated in this area. Attacking the railway lines here could block or disrupt the Ukrainian Army’s logistics operations.
In addition, the Russian army also increased attacks on Western logistics centers and weapons warehouses in Ukraine. Since March, the Russian Army has carried out nearly 200 attacks on Ukraine’s energy facilities and defense industrial complexes.
The Russian army also carried out two large-scale attacks using precision weapons and the Geran-2 killer UAV, destroying several warehouses of weapons aid from the West to Ukraine. In that context, the West believes that the transportation of weapons through Ukrainian territory is becoming a serious problem that Ukraine faces.
However, two Russian experts, Ivan Lizan and Alexei Ampirogov, both said that although Russia has increased attacks on Ukrainian warehouses to secure the battlefield, even if Russia destroys the entire bridge on the Dnieper River , will also not lead to a shortage of fuel and weapons for the Ukrainian Army, let alone its collapse.
The reason is that Ukraine has established a large logistics network, including many different small cargo legs throughout its territory since 2014, and many logistics facilities have dual-use functions. Yesterday, it could have been a civilian facility and Russia didn’t attack it; but today, it has become a military facility, it will be attacked.
In addition, Ukraine also has a very developed road and rail transport network. It is important that Ukraine’s territory is so large, otherwise the Russian Army could have destroyed Ukraine’s entire transportation network and warehouses long ago.
But if the Russian Army only uses high-precision missiles, it will be difficult for them to destroy the Ukrainian Army’s logistics lines. Because this is a complicated task because Ukraine has too many facilities, while the price of precision missiles is too high and the number of missiles certainly cannot be many.
However, Russia has recently acquired a lot of cheap weapons to destroy Ukraine’s transportation networks and warehouses. First, the Russian Army’s intelligence and reconnaissance capabilities have been significantly improved, through the continuous launch of high-resolution reconnaissance satellites as well as more effective ground intelligence forces.
Second, in addition to focusing on the production of missiles that attack targets in real time such as the Iskander-M tactical ballistic missile, Russia also increased the production of large numbers of long-range suicide UAVs Geran-M. 2, at the same time actively modernizing this type of UAV, turning it into a cruise missile that not only has a larger warhead but also increased speed and higher accuracy.
Such real-time high-precision strike weapons and low-cost high-precision UAVs have given Russia the advantage of long-range strikes, to destroy the Ukrainian Army’s logistics supply network. ; making it increasingly difficult for Ukrainian troops to fight on the front. (Image source: Avia.pro, Alamy, Sina, Topwar, Ukrinform).
