You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs. My name is Ryan Evans and I'm sitting here again with Michael Kaufman to talk about the war in Ukraine.

Mike, the Ukrainian counter-offensive around Kirsona's the topic on everyone's lips right now.

Could you talk to us about what's going on with this counter-offensive when it started where it seems to be focused?

Sure, so the Ukrainian offensive so far seems to have

have three main axis of advance, right? The first one was far north and

there's been fighting up there for the past several months, a fairly dynamic

battlefield. This is coming down from a

creepy rig and this is basically pinching and advancing into Russian lines.

For example, in your town like Yubimovka and whatnot, and they are the Russian forces that

always been relatively stretched them.

The second one, I think probably from my primary, the most important one is down the middle.

Over the past three months Ukrainian forces have been trying to make incremental

gains around the town called DeVito Brid and essentially establish a bridge head

across the river that runs to this region.

It's called the Inhalats River and it basically runs all the way down to the Nipper.

And this river is quite important because striking bridges along this river constrains

Russia's ability to maneuver through the region, reinforced forces across the territory. They hold in Kirsun. And of course getting across

the river and taking control of the major ground lines of communications, the highway,

that's probably one of Ukraine's key objectives and I suspect what they're trying to do

is they're trying to sever Russian forces in half.

Essentially cut off the Russian units that are north of Kerson from those that are

defending the actual city of

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