Every war, everywhere, every when, has been won or lost by logistics. The side that can, as the saying goes, move the most beans and bullets the fastest and most efficiently wins. The Allies won World War II in large part because the United States was rolling bombers off assembly lines every 48 minutes and doing the 1944 equivalent of 3-D printing Sherman tanks; we may not have had the best, but we had the most. What's more, we could feed and clothe our fighting men, too.
That still applies, and one smart play in any conflict is to go after your opponent's supply lines. That's what a big part of General Sherman's march to the sea was in the American Civil War: cutting the Confederacy in half to keep supplies from the west reaching Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. The same applies to General Phil Sheridan and his cavalry's raids in the agricultural Shenandoah Valley.
Now, Russia, in the seemingly endless Russo-Ukrainian War, is paying more attention to Ukraine's food supply, and they are hitting, not the military supply lines, but the civilian food infrastructure and delivery systems.
Russian drone attacks on Kyiv and the surrounding region stretched into a fifth consecutive day Monday, with strikes damaging warehouses, a retail outlet and residential buildings in the Kyiv region.
The attacks are part of a broader campaign against Ukrainian commercial and logistics infrastructure. Reuters reported Aug. 28 that Russia had targeted warehouses belonging to major supermarket chains, Ukraine’s largest private postal company and home-goods retailers.
Ukraine’s Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyi said that roughly 90% of the food logistics infrastructure operated by retail chains had been destroyed.
Ukraine maintains that they have a plan B.
"As of today, roughly speaking, 90% of food logistics operated by retail chains have been destroyed, but that doesn't mean Ukrainians will be left without food," Vysotskyi told reporters in Kyiv, according to Ukrainian state news agency Ukrinform. He said retailers would shift logistics and use alternative methods of delivering food.
Plan Bs are great, until you need a plan C.
Here's the thing: This thing has doubtless gone on a lot longer than Vladimir Putin or the Russian military command thought it would. Every time a peace deal has been proposed, either the Russians have walked away from it, or the Ukrainians have. The basic premises of any deal have been known for some time; Putin wants all of the Donbas region, even portions that are not currently being trodden by Russian boots. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky wants Crimea back under Ukrainian control. Probably neither will happen. The best Ukraine can hope for is the status quo ante 2022; it won't get Crimea back. The best Putin can hope for is to keep what Ukrainian territory he already holds. Kyiv won't surrender any more.
Even so, things for Ukraine could be a lot worse. They are making good and innovative use of drones, and have managed some well-planned, well-thought-out and audacious attacks deep inside Russian territory, largely with drones. They, too, have been hitting Russia's supply lines. But word has it that Ukraine is running low on air-defense assets, and that may well haunt them in this latest Russian escalation.
So now, to add to everything else, some Ukrainian civilians are going to be going hungry. In Eastern Europe, it's still slash-and-snap time at the zoo.