May 15 2026 - Day 1541b - continued
I Think Crimea is Going to Get Cut Off, Just Not the Way We Thought
This is a speculative essay not news, so if you’re just wanting the latest updates skip this.
But if you ask me, and want to take a look into the futures, I think we can say “Don’t look now, but the Ukrainians have figured out a way to cut off Crimea from the rest of Russia. If you pay attention you can see them doing it already. Seriously.”
This is like in Apr. ’22 when the Ukrainians demonstrated they could hit a Russian warship with missiles at 200+ km. It was reasonable to predict, as this review did, that that capacity would eventually make Sevastopol untenable for Russian naval operations. It took about 18 months.
The veterans among you probably remember back in May 2023 there was a general opinion in the West that hopefully a ZSU armed with NATO tanks and infantry fighting vehicles would punch through to Crimea in a ground offensive from Zaporizhzhia region, because NATO thought that was how to end the war quickly. Even people with little knowledge of geography could see, once they actually looked at a map of Ukraine, that Russian logistic lines into Crimea could be vulnerable. But that plan failed, Ukraine was defeated, the Russians won.
Before I get to the present, however, hearken back to May 2025, which less of you probably remember. Among the news of the time was that the Russians had, following their victory in Zaporizhzhia region, been building a spiffy new direct rail line running Taganrog-Mariupol-Melitopol, along the north Azov Sea shore. The idea was to nail down Russian control of the area with a continuous rail line connecting Crimea with the Russian mainland overland rather than by a bridge over the Kerch Strait.
Construction by mid-May had got to the point where the Russians were running fuel trains regularly from Volnovakha and talking about passenger service.
That Russian idea of a Trans-Tavria rail link failed, as a few of you may recall, because the Ukrainian special forces and HUR effectively waited for the freight trains to start moving regularly and then they started ambushing the Russian trains with drones. One of the most spectacular attacks, on about May 23–24 2025, caught a fuel train near a village called Novobodhanivka (47.0913824, 35.3175684), torched it, and plugged up the line. (Single-track). When the Russians sent repair trains to clear the right-of-way, the special operators blew them up too. I did a collage about that.
By late 2025 the Russians were reduced to only being able to run armored freight trains from Volnovakha to Melitopol by an existing route a lot closer to Ukrainian lines, and then infrequently.
Fast forward to this month. The rail line is still out, but, now Russian mil-bloggers are complaining about a new development: Now the Ukrainian drones are patrolling the Melitopol-Mariupol highway, and hunting trucks. The reasons this is happening now are well-known and should be obvious: since mid-2025 the Ukrainians have up-scaled both the volume of strikes on the Russian immediate rear area and military logistics.
How this happened is equally clear: Since mid-2025 the drone forces have received several new strike drones that are very effective in the 50–150 km. range envelope (Bulava, RAM-2X, and Blyskavka), a solid reconnaissance drone that operates persistently in that envelope (Shark), bigger numbers of all those weapons, and probably most important, last Fall the SBS forces took over most medium-range strike management from the special ops/HUR/SBU.
In other words, Robert “Madyar” Brovdi got put in charge of the operation, so instead of sneak-deaky cool guy management the operation is run like a business with everyone pulling his weight or out the door, and clear performance requirements. If you look at how the SBS is running strike operations, very often you find that there are logical, practical reasons for decisions made. I flagged Azov Brigade’s drone unit flying strike and observation missions over Mariupol — a place Azov knows intimately from having fought there since 2014. I contend this didn’t happen by accident.
Somehow Ukraine’s drone force leadership decided those pilots needed to be operating there. Now that same leadership is thinking about how to shut down road traffic in the Tavria steppe (i.e. in between Mariupol and Crimea).
On the other side of the war, last several weeks, the Russian mil-bloggers have been complaining loudly that among the several worrying trends in progress at the moment one of the most concerning is that the Melitopol-Mariupol highway — I have driven the M14 more times than I care to remember and so have several long-time readers of this blog — is now permanently under Ukrainian drone observation and trucks are being hit.
To be accurate, the road isn’t shut down, yet, some loads still do get through. But last month there were no attacks at all. This isn’t Ukrainian propaganda, it’s pretty much all the Russian mil-bloggers: Romanov, Rybar, Adekvatniy Kharkovchan, Maxim Kalashnikov.
Implications?
Well, technically, nothing yet. But — if you look at the map, and the performance of the SBS so far, and the probable direction of Ukrainian drone production in the future, and Russian air defense capacity to stop a sustained Ukrainian drone effort to hit a high value target in Russia (*cough-Ryazan*) it’s very, very difficult to imagine a future in which Russian vehicle traffic will be able to drive freely from Mariupol and Russia to Crimea along the north Azov Sea coast.
It’s hard to see any other outcome, except, Ukrainian medium range drones dominating the M-14 and the spur to Crimea (the E105) will inevitably shut down that route. It is an obvious target, we can see them working in this direction, the Ukrainians have demonstrated the have the technology and they know how to use it effectively, and the Russians demonstrably cannot prevent the Ukrainians from making more drones.
At the pace the Ukrainians work, and accounting for weather and the rest of war, a conservative estimate is a lockdown of Crimea’s northern supply routes will be effective in 6–9 months. It could be faster.
It’s not just about Crimea. This isn’t just the main supply route for Russian forces in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson region that would be in jeopardy as well. Once the northern supply route to Crimea falls under effective Ukrainian drone interdiction — and I’m saying it looks to me like not “if,” but “when” — then the Ukrainians will move Heaven and Earth to destroy the Kerch bridge. Already they’ve just about demolished the ferries. They hit Taman port on Wednesday.
My guess, if there is a Ukrainian plan to WIN the war, this is it: Use drones to dominate approaches to Crimea, occupied Kherson and occupied Zaporizhzhia regions, and then intensify that dominance so that Russian military in those places cannot be supplied by land.
One cannot say, for sure, that this plan will work. But absolutely, one also cannot say it for sure will fail.
Certainly, it is still possible to find people who will argue the Ukrainians are too disorganized and un-western, or un-Russian, to think that far ahead and implement a plan like that.
All I can say to that is, look at the war so far.
I think all of us reading this blog is talking about what might happen. Speculating in it actually. So you doing it is quite interesting. And honestly you are not the only one telling that Crimea is/will be isolated. But you gave a good description of what is happening and an interesting time frame. Three questions. First, what about the Kerch bridge and the connection that way? Second, what countermeasures can Russia take? Third, how bad is this for the southern front of Russia? if you time estimates hold they will be in big trouble around Christmas.
No kidding: “Just look at the war so far.”