For decades, the US campaign against the Ho Chi Minh Trail stood as the textbook example of a failed attempt to sever an enemy’s supply lines. American bombers pounded the jungle route for years, yet North Vietnamese forces kept moving south. Now, in the scrublands of southern Ukraine, Kyiv appears to be succeeding where Washington was thwarted.
The R-280 highway – Russia’s last reliable overland route to Crimea – has been transformed by relentless Ukrainian drone strikes into what Russian troops themselves now call the “highway of death”. Unlike the jungle trails of Vietnam, there is nowhere for the convoys to hide.
“Relentless Ukrainian drone strikes have turned Russia's last reliable overland route to Crimea into a 'highway of death'.”
“It’s a very classic military strategy. They often say that amateurs talk tactics and professionals talk logistics,” Robert Tollast, a researcher in the land warfare team at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) think tank, told The Telegraph.
The R-280 stretches more than 300 miles from Rostov-on-Don through occupied Mariupol and Melitopol to Crimea along the coast of the Sea of Azov. It has become the main supply route for Russian troops fighting across the southern front, from Zaporizhzhia and Kherson to the Crimean peninsula itself.
Moscow has only two reliable overland routes into Crimea. The first, via the Kerch Bridge, is so heavily damaged and exposed to repeated strikes that Russia has long avoided sending fuel and military cargo across it. The second, the R-280, is now being hunted relentlessly.
“You’ve got the Kerch Bridge, you’ve got the R-280 highway, and that’s it,” said Nick Reynolds, a research fellow for land warfare at Rusi. “This has always been the dilemma Russia would face if the highway could be cut, or if the bridge could be cut.”
On May 27, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s defence minister, gave this campaign a name and a price tag: a $113m (£84m) “logistics lockdown” on the R-280, formally declaring as policy what had, for weeks, been a quiet and steadily escalating operation.
“Even before the defence minister’s announcement, the Joint Forces had been carrying out strikes against Russian logistics in the south for quite some time, starting in the first half of May,” explained Nazarii Barchuk, an analyst at the Ukrainian Centre for Security and Cooperation. “The announcement of the ‘logistical blockade’ is a demonstration of Ukrainian capabilities and an emphasis on the success of the operation.”
Footage circulating from Ukrainian drone units shows the campaign in granular detail. Fuel tankers and supply trucks can be seen caught mid-journey on the R-280, many engulfed in flames after being attacked. Other clips offer the drone’s perspective, the road rushing into view before the screen cuts to black on impact.
The pressure on the route is forcing Moscow to confront an uncomfortable truth: after four years of war, there is no longer a safe way to keep Crimea supplied.
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian drone attack killed one person and sparked a fire at a sea terminal in the southern Russian port of Temryuk, in the Krasnodar region, governor Veniamin Kondratiev said on Saturday on the Telegram messaging app. According to reports from Reuters, Ukraine’s military and the SBU security service said that Ukrainian drones hit several targets in Russia during overnight attacks – the oil and gas terminal in the Russian Krasnodar region and also an oil processing and pumping facility in the Volgograd region.
Ukrainian drones hit the Tamanneftegaz oil and gas terminal in the Krasnodar region, striking five fuel tanks and also two oil loading stands, the SBU security service said. A separate strike on Saturday sparked a fire in an industrial area of the Kotovo district in the Volgograd region, regional authorities said, citing governor Andrei Bocharov.
Russian attacks across Ukraine killed at least eight civilians and injured 62 others over the past day, regional authorities said today. Overnight, Russia launched 118 drones, including Shahed-type attack drones, with Ukraine’s air force reporting that 110 were intercepted.
The ambassadors from the European Union’s 27 member states agreed to advance accession talks with Ukraine and Moldova, paving the way for the first phase of negotiations to begin Monday.