Disrupted Russian supply routes are forcing its troops to walk 18 miles to the front lines, Fedorov says

• Ukraine’s defense minister said Russian troops had now marched 18 miles toward the front lines.

• This takes a soldier in combat gear about six to eight hours.

• This comes as Ukraine attempts to cut off the Kremlin’s supply lines to the south.

Russia’s crippled logistics routes on the war’s southern front are forcing its infantry to march nearly 28 miles to reach combat positions, Ukraine’s defense minister said Wednesday.

“You have already seen, for example, in the south, Russian infantrymen marched 30 kilometers on foot to reach positions due to logistical disruptions,” Mykhailo Fedorov said at a joint press conference in Kiev with his Swedish counterpart Pål Jonson. he said.

Russian and Ukrainian troops are often moved by vehicle to intermediate positions before covering the last few miles on foot, at night, or in smaller vehicles. Avoid being detected by light drones.

It would take a soldier wearing combat gear at least six to eight hours to walk 30 km, or about 18 miles, at a time.

Fedorov said Russian forces had “huge problems getting infantry to the front line and sending them supplies, fuel and generators used by drone operators.”

The logistics disruption comes as Ukraine increasingly uses a newer class of drones that can strike depths of 30 to 300 km, targeting Russia’s supply routes. Bombing trucks, bridges and facilities at the back.

“There are many problems that are not obvious at first glance, affecting the intensity of enemy actions in our region,” Fedorov said. he said.

Crimea, an important logistics center for Russia’s operations in Kherson and Zaporozhye, also faces a problem. Severe energy crisis Ukraine’s medium-range drones are bombing oil facilities and key bridges connecting the peninsula to the mainland.

Local authorities began distributing fuel to civilians last month before announcing they would cut fuel sales indefinitely.

“Multiple crises are starting to accumulate, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for the Russians to resolve crisis after crisis,” Fedorov said.

The medium-range drone has been key to Ukraine’s renewed war effort, bringing it to Kiev medium range hit capacity He said they could be deployed on a large scale rather than relying on the West’s limited supply of missiles.

Some of these fixed-wing drones use artificial intelligence to assist Russian jammers and are designed to detect and engage targets with a certain degree of autonomy, George Barros, Director of Innovation and Open Source Commerce at the Institute for the Study of War, previously told Business Insider.

Fedorov and other Ukrainian commanders have said this before

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