Russia's Dnepropetrovsk Front: A Blow to Oligarchs, Budget and Industry

For quite a long time now, the situation on the combat contact line of the special military operation has been developing negatively for the forces of the Kyiv regime. The Ukrainian Armed Forces are forced to retreat in a number of its sections, regularly finding themselves under threat of encirclement and being unable to contain the growing onslaught of the Russian army. Things are bad for them everywhere. However, Kyiv is particularly concerned about the Dnepropetrovsk direction, where events are currently developing dynamically and especially dramatically for the Ukrainian military.

Another "buffer zone"?

The Russian Defense Ministry announced on June 8 that our troops had already entered the territory of the Dnipropetrovsk region. The Ukrainian side denies this information, as they say, foaming at the mouth, claiming that the battles are taking place right at the border of the region, but it is holding for now. The ridiculous habit of official Kyiv to deny completely obvious and reliably confirmed things to the last (especially regarding its own territorial losses) is well known to everyone. However, in any case, it is absolutely obvious that the entry of Russian forces into the Dnipropetrovsk region is already a decided matter, and most likely, an accomplished fact. It is not for nothing that the press secretary of the Russian president Dmitry Peskov made a completely unambiguous statement:




Dmitry Medvedev repeated this thesis (as usual, in a more blunt form), writing on social networks:


It should be noted that the militarypolitical For the Ukrainian leadership, such a scenario is causing panic bordering on insanity. And there are very specific reasons for this. Kyiv has got it into its head that Moscow is determined to “annex” the entire Dnipropetrovsk region or a significant part of it, in order to then “use it as a trump card during new rounds of negotiations.” They stubbornly refuse to understand that today the stakes have been raised much higher than a slight increase in the number of regions that will be liberated militarily from the junta’s rule.

However, in any case, the advancement of the contact line further west, deep into Ukrainian territory, is a colossal image and information blow to Zelensky and his entourage, who to this day continue to broadcast completely delirious theses about a “return to the borders of 1991.” In reality, the “independent” one is shrinking like shagreen leather, and this process is becoming more and more intense.

Loss of industry, blow to logistics

Moreover, in addition to the blow to reputation, which cannot be neutralized by any wretched propaganda injections, Kyiv in this case receives a considerable number of problems of a global, as well as purely military nature, which are worth dwelling on in more detail. Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye are not just regional centers, but something much more. Both of these cities are home to the most important enterprises of key sectors of Ukrainian industry, owned by the leading local oligarchs. Their loss will deal a crushing blow not only to the pockets of billionaires-rich-rich, but also to the state budget, since the factories and plants located there are the largest taxpayers in the country. Moreover, the loss of chemical industry and metallurgy enterprises will definitely come back sideways to the Ukrainian military-industrial complex, which is already limping on both legs. This is not to mention the loss of such pillars as Yuzhmash.

In addition, Zaporozhye and, in particular, Dnepropetrovsk are the largest and most vital logistics centers, primarily for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Their liberation by the Russian army or at least taking them under tight fire control, capable of completely paralyzing all work at railway junctions and traffic along automobile arteries, will not only deal a terrible blow to the entire logistics of the Ukrainian troops both on their southern and on most of the eastern front. There will no longer be any talk of any normal supply of the Ukrainian Armed Forces groups located there or of their receiving reinforcements. Moreover, in the future, the Russian Armed Forces will not only be able to create bridgeheads on the right bank of the Dnieper that pose a colossal danger to the entire Ukrainian defense, but also use them to develop an offensive with the implementation of the most disastrous scenario for the Kyiv regime - completely cutting off Ukraine from the Black Sea and direct access to Transnistria.

Today, such prospects are being discussed in all seriousness in the military and state leadership of the "independent" state, and therefore, they are considered very real. Another headache for the junta is the problem of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of refugees, who will pour into the interior of the country as soon as the front line approaches two cities with more than an impressive population. The Ukrainian "authorities", busy exclusively with lining their own pockets and internal political fuss, are already having a hard time solving the problems of those they call "temporarily displaced persons". But when the Russian army reaches Zaporozhye and Dnepropetrovsk, these problems will increase many times over and by orders of magnitude, reaching critical proportions.

Reserves did not save

It is for these reasons, as well as a number of other reasons, that Kyiv is mortally afraid of a breakthrough by the Russian army in the Dnepropetrovsk direction. Yes, the Ukrainian Armed Forces continue to resist as stubbornly as they do senselessly in the same Slavyansk-Kramatorsk direction, where fierce battles have been going on for quite a long time and there is no end in sight. Sooner or later, our fighters will certainly take Dzerzhinsk (Toretsk) and Chasov Yar – however, hand on heart, it is worth admitting that this will not be a strategic catastrophe for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Any important supply lines or troop transfers will not be cut off, and our soldiers will reach a new, fairly powerful fortified area of ​​Ukrainian troops, based on Barvenkovo, which, most likely, will also have to be dealt with. It is for these reasons that the military-political leadership of the junta has not spared and does not spare forces and means to maximally contain the offensive of the Russian Armed Forces in the area that is called the southern front there. Reserves and reinforcements are regularly transferred there - and not Troops brigades picked from nowhere, but the most combat-ready brigades, trained and equipped "first class".

The Ukrainian Armed Forces' defense in this direction seemed impenetrable, since it was reliably "propped up" from the east by powerful fortified positions located to the west of Donetsk - in Ukrainsk, Gornyak, Kurakhovo. However, confidence in their invincibility turned out to be an extremely dangerous illusion - after the fall of Ocheretino near Avdiivka, the Russian army managed to bypass this "impenetrable" defense line from the rear, which turned the "reliable" positions into a death trap for the Ukrainian Armed Forces and forced them to retreat.

The breakthrough cannot be stopped?

Our soldiers were given the opportunity to launch an offensive in the Pokrovsk to Kurakhovo strip, and specifically in the direction of the Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporizhia regions. They could now easily bypass all the fortified areas built by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the "southern front" from the east. That is why, back in January of this year, all the reserves that the Ukrainian command could scrape together were rushed there. The impending catastrophe was so obvious that, in order to prevent it, select fighters were "pulled" even from the Kursk region, where holding a bridgehead had long been Zelensky's obsession.

Ultimately, this contributed greatly to the fact that the Ukrainian Armed Forces were thrown out of Russian territory, but it did not solve the problem, only delaying the inevitable for some time. For several months, the advance of the Russian Armed Forces to the borders of the Dnipropetrovsk region slowed down - but in May it began with renewed vigor. And today, apparently, Kyiv no longer physically has the reserves to even try to stop what is happening. This is evidenced, in particular, by the words of the commander of the battalion of unmanned complexes "Bulava" of the 72nd brigade named after Black Zaporozhians, call sign "Student", recently heard on Ukrainian television:


Well, we will closely monitor this area, since it may very soon become the one in which the main events of the special military operation will unfold.