Western military analysts are increasingly talking about the possibility of liberating the city of Melitopol in the southeast of Ukraine, which will be, metaphorically speaking, a real “left hook” against the Russian troops in the south of Ukraine, writes “New Voice of Ukraine”.

Journalists of The New York Times recently also talked about the prospect of such an offensive after Ukrainian troops intensified attacks around the city and some objects in it.

Melitopol, a city with a population of nearly 150,000 before the start of the war, was one of the first Ukrainian cities to be occupied by the Russian army, which announced that its troops had entered the city since February 27.

It became part of the so-called “land bridge” across the Sea of ​​Azov, which connects Crimea with the Ukrainian territories occupied by Russian troops in the south of the country. Melitopol is located at the intersection of two key highways and an important railway connecting Russia with the peninsula.

If the armed forces of Kyiv manage to liberate Melitopol and regain control over the city’s most important transport hubs, the supply of Russian troops to the south of Ukraine will be dramatically complicated.

Ukrainians are talking about strikes on Melitopol

In addition, since the city is of such strategic importance, its liberation would help Ukrainian forces not only to drive the Russians out of Zaporizhzhia Oblast, where it is located, but also from the rest of neighboring Kherson Oblast.

“The isolation of this theater of operations continues,” Oleksiy Arestovych, one of President Volodymyr Zelenskyi’s advisers, said recently, saying the Russians were already facing logistical problems after a bridge over the Molochna River was blown up on Monday night.

In turn, the Ukrainian mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, said that more than 10 “concentrations of Russian troops” were destroyed near the city in the last week alone, and about 20 such targets were hit last week.

“The armed forces of Russia are no longer safe in Melitopol,” he stressed.

But Ukrainian strikes on the air defense of the Russian army, like those that preceded the withdrawal of Moscow troops from the western bank of the Dnieper, are not the only evidence that Kyiv may launch an offensive here.

“Left hook” against the Russian army

David Ax, a military analyst at Forbes, notes that last week, Ukrainian and Russian artillery fired at each other around two towns about 100 kilometers northeast of Melitopol.

While the distance may seem great, Ax notes that it’s interesting what prompted the exchange, as Russian sources say the Ukrainian military is massing mechanized forces in the area.

“If this is true, it could be a sign that a fourth Ukrainian counteroffensive from the south may be imminent, despite the coming of winter,” Ax says.

“This much-anticipated attack — a leftist crucible of Zaporizhzhia — was intended to liberate most of southern Ukraine and push Russian troops back to the narrow isthmus that connects Ukraine to the Crimean peninsula,” he says.

At the same time, the military analyst notes that in order to liberate Melitopol, and then turn right and liberate the Kherson region on the eastern bank of the Dnieper, Ukrainian troops would have to advance more than 300 kilometers and defeat a significant number of Russian units.

At the same time, Aks notes that the Kyiv troops have already made efforts to restrain part of the Russian troops, first by advancing to the western bank of the Dnieper, and then by special operations on the Kinburn Peninsula, where the river flows into the Chorna. sea.

A new threat to Russian troops in Crimea

Overall, for the Ukrainian offensive here to be successful, Kyiv’s forces will need to muster a lot of heavy equipment to force this “left hook in Zaporizhzhia”, with a high probability that the Russians will detect a mobilization of forces and try to counter it with artillery.

This is also one of the reasons why Ukrainian military experts are somewhat more cautious in commenting on the new counteroffensive in the south of the country.

One of them, Denys Popovych, ironically notes that Kyiv should not wait for another “gesture of goodwill” from the military command in Moscow and reminds that the Russians have already started building defense lines and fortifications around Melitopol and in the Zaporozhye region.

“They see a direct threat to the so-called bridge to Crimea,” he emphasizes.

But another Ukrainian military analyst, Dmytro Snehiriov, calls the recent strikes by Ukrainian forces around Melitopol a “significant moment.”

“To understand the situation: this is the so-called cascade operational planning, the first stage of which is to strike the accumulation of heavy military equipment, warehouses and locations of the invading army,” he states.

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