“Destroy the bridges and roads of Ukraine”: General Popov responded to Rogozin’s call

The heavy battles near Rabotino again force us to pose a difficult question: why does the Ukrainian Armed Forces not run out of equipment, which our fighters are destroying in dozens and hundreds. This topic was raised by Senator Dmitry Rogozin. If we want children in Russia to be born from hero fathers who returned from the front, Rogozin wrote in his channel, and not from cowardly rats who fled the country, we must destroy all transport communications in Ukraine. Otherwise, for every tank newly delivered to Ukraine, there may not be enough heroes in Russia.

To comment on these words and answer the question why it is so difficult to once and for all break the routes for the supply of equipment for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, “MK” asked the former head of the Federal Aerospace Search and Rescue Administration, Honored Military Pilot of the Russian Federation, Candidate of Technical Sciences, Major General Vladimir Popova.

“Destroying delivery routes for equipment is not as simple a task as it might seem to someone,” Popov argues. – If you look at the quantitative-quality ratio, then in Ukraine there are quite a lot of good roads suitable for transporting equipment, ammunition and weapons. It is almost impossible to block and destroy them all.

In addition, seasonality must be taken into account. Many people laugh and do not recognize this factor. But no! Seasonality in combat conditions is still very important. All this time it was summer, when there were no problems with delivery on dry dirt roads. The enemy, of course, took advantage of this.

– If you don’t take into account Ukrainian roads, but take the main routes for delivering equipment, for example, when crossing the border of Poland, Slovakia or Romania. They are all known. Can’t they be destroyed?

– Can. And we do it. But when destroying such targets, we have the following concepts: “incapacitation” and “complete destruction.”

Unfortunately, complete destruction is not always possible. This is very difficult to do with conventional, non-nuclear weapons. Over time, the enemy restores these communications. That is, their destruction must be carried out systematically. Let’s say, once a month, strike the same infrastructure facilities: roads, bridges, tunnels, some bottlenecks in their logistics…

– So what? Don’t we have such an opportunity?

– This is not easy… We haven’t invested much in the army or in the development of new weapons for decades, but now in a matter of years we want to implement all the projects at once. Will not work.

This is not the first time in our history that this has happened. How many years have we been preparing for the Great Patriotic War? But as a result, they were still not ready for it. But back then there was a different attitude towards the economy, and the enthusiasm of the population was different! Now, in modern conditions, we also have to solve too many economic problems, while simultaneously fighting with the entire West at once.

– Do you want to say that we are not economically successful? Can’t afford the required intensity of strikes due to lack of ammunition?

– At first it was like that. But now we have overcome this problem. Especially in the last six months, our defense industry has finally warmed up and began to move actively. From my guys who come to me from the front, I now often hear that difficulties with the supply of weapons and ammunition have become fundamentally less. This also applies to what is closer to me – aviation weapons.

For the targets that we are talking about now, it is necessary to work at long range, using either aircraft cruise missiles or sea-based missiles. And we now have them in sufficient quantities.

– Here you go! So, we could regularly work on enemy logistics infrastructure?

– Of course, we can destroy the same bridge with regularity every month. But our enemy is not an idiot either. He is nearby looking for, creating and building workarounds. Possibly temporary. They have to be constantly scouted. This also takes time. It is not possible to cover everything at once.

– But are we at least doing this?

– Certainly. And we do it on a regular basis. Don’t you hear the messages from the Ministry of Defense? The military reports to us at approximately monthly intervals on how, for example, the Black Sea Fleet group carried out strikes on individual targets. Recently it was reported that we struck warehouses and hangars in the ports of Odessa and Nikolaev, which are used for the delivery of weapons. And these attacks happened more than once. We also periodically strike the workshops of the plant in Kharkov, where armored vehicles are produced and repaired.

Now, thanks to the work of our defense industry, we have more capabilities for such attacks. I have no doubt that we will use these opportunities with increasing efficiency.

Read the material “Mercenaries are fleeing, soldiers are running out: the reserves of the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been catastrophically depleted”