Of course, Kyiv is the seat of the government and the birthplace of historic Rus. If Putin gives the order to take Odesa and the city falls, the blow to Ukrainian independence will be every bit as great as the conquest of Kyiv, and in some ways even greater.

At the same time, a huge armada is already positioned offshore, ready to strike. From the East, the Russian forces are fighting their way toward the city overland from Kherson, through Mykolaiv. There, Russian forces managed to penetrate deep, exploding north out of Crimea and taking the cities of Kherson and Melitopol, while besieging Mariupol, thereby cutting off Ukraine’s access to the Sea of Azov and securing a land corridor extending all the way from Donbas to Crimea.Īs a result, the way is now open for Russian leader Vladimir Putin to conquer Odesa, which currently stands before a double threat.

In the south, Russia’s advance has been radically more successful. Russia’s slowness in conquering Kyiv has created the sense that things are going better, in general, for Ukraine than they really are. Western attention, however, has been disproportionally focused on the northern front, where no major cities (at the time of writing) have been captured. A smart strategy requires winning both wars simultaneously. The differences between the two are so great that they remind one of the opening stages of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, when distinctly different conditions shaped Israel’s two fronts, in the Sinai and Golan Heights. The war in Ukraine is, geopolitically speaking, two wars in one: the war in the north and the war in the south.

The operational art of war iv tutorial