Oryx retired.
And the same happened with the Kherson counteroffensive last year. The Ukrainians announced Russian losses but there were no visual confirmation, until they finally took the territory later after applying enough pressure to force the Russians to retreat, and then suddenly there was all the visual confirmations surfacing.
OPSEC means not taking your smartphone with you to instantly tweet pictures of stuff you destroy as you destroy it.
Pretty much opposite-of-reality.txt. Russia cares about controlling territory very much because it is the only tangible way to claim that the Special Military Operation is succeeding. Ukraine used Bakhmut as a killing field to grind the Russian forces down, because the topology of the area heavily favors the side on the west of the city.
The entire reason why Russia wants the landbridge is because it needs it to support Crimea. Having to go through Crimea to support troops stuck in Kherson/Zapo area is of course possible, but it'll be logistically complicated as it involves much longer distances. Ukraine demonstrated it can strike the Chongar bridge, so when the time is right, they'll play this card again.
The throughput can never be reduced all the way to zero, but it can be lowered drastically so that it becomes insufficient to meet the needs of the occupation troops. That's why getting the Tokmak railroad and the Melitopol highway under fire control is important. It'll force Russia to go all the way around. Instead of being able to move troops from Luhansk to Kherson directly by road or railroad across the landbridge, they'll have to go through Rostov, Krasnodar, the Kerch bridge, Crimea, and they'll arrive once the battle is already lost. Inversely, evacuating troops from Kherson region will also have to go through all this large loop, putting a serious delay before they can return to the fight.
And this is how you can turn productive members of your society that should be heading to the factories to keep your economy afloat into low-morale troops that will desert or surrender at the earliest opportunity.
