Inside Ukraine’s concealed Center 73, where private objectives form the war behind the frontline

Ukraine: Their very first fight strategy was dated the minute the dam fallen apart. The Ukrainian unique forces officers invested 6 months adjusting their battle to protect a crossing to the other side of the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine. It wasn’t enough simply to cross the river. They required backup to hold it. And for that, they required evidence that it might be done. For among the officers, nicknamed Skif, that indicated a flag – and a media event. Skif, Ukrainian shorthand for the nomadic Scythian individuals who established an empire on what is now Crimea, moves like the camouflaged amphibian that he is: Calculating, purposeful, till the time to strike. He is an officer in Center 73, among Ukraine’s most elite systems of unique forces – frontline scouts, drone operators, undersea saboteurs. Their strike groups become part of the Special Operations Forces that run the partisans in occupied areas, slip into Russian barracks to plant bombs and prepare the ground for recovering area taken by Russia. Their objective on the more vibrant of the 2 primary fronts in the six-month counteroffensive shows a number of the issues of Ukraine’s wider effort. It’s been among the couple of counteroffensive successes for the Ukrainian army. By late May, the Center 73 males remained in location along the river’s edge, a few of them nearly within view of the Kakhovka Dam. They were within series of the Russian forces who had actually managed the dam and land throughout the Dnipro because the very first days after the February 2022 major intrusion. And both sides understood Ukraine’s looming counteroffensive had its sights on control of the river as the secret to recover the occupied south. In the operation’s opening days, on June 6, a surge damaged the dam, sending out a wall of tank water downstream, eliminating unknown varieties of civilians, and rinsing the Ukrainian army positions. “We were prepared to cross. And after that the dam exploded,” Skif stated. The water increased 20 meters (backyards), immersing supply lines, the Russian positions and whatever else in its course for numerous kilometers. The race was on: Whose forces could take the islands when the waters declined, and with them complete control of the Dnipro? For many Ukrainians who see them on the streets in the almost
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