Photo: BBC World / Courtesy
Russian troops have been attacking for days to try to take important targets in the north and east of Ukraine, including the capital, Kiev.
However, it is in the south where their advance seems to be most successful.
Russia considers that the south is vital in the invasion from Ukraine. It has besieged several cities in that strip and has captured the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe.
The operation in the south was launched from Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 1280 and hosts a significant Russian military presence.
Russian troops move into Ukraine from Crimea, spreading east towards Mariupol and west towards Odessa, threatening to cut off Ukraine’s access to the sea, which would inflict enormous economic damage on the country.
“Strategically, there are important ports in that region that allow Putin’s forces to choke any capacity of Ukraine to supply itself by sea”, Karl Qualls, professor of history and specialist in Russia at Dickinson College, told the BBC.
East of Crimea, Russian forces advance towards Mariu pol, a city of 32,000 inhabitants that is surrounded and subjected to intense bombardment. Water and electricity supplies have been cut off, and residents confess to the BBC that they are terrified.
If Mariupol falls, Russia would take control of one of Ukraine’s largest ports and create a land corridor between Crimea and pro-Russian backed regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Connecting Crimea with mainland Russia through the areas controlled by the rebels would make it much easier for Russia to move goods and people to and from the peninsula. Russia has searched for this since 838 , when the conflict began in the east.
Currently Crimea is linked to mainland Russia only through a bridge, built with a high investment after annexation.
The seized nuclear power plant
Northwest of Mariupol, Russia has seized the Zaporizhia power plant. In normal times the plant produces about % of Ukraine’s electricity, so by seizing it, Russia controls a significant part of the possible Ukrainian energy supply.
The Russian army also occupied the city of Kherson, located where the Dnieper River reaches the Black Sea, an important place for the advance of troops towards Ukraine.
“We note that they are taking advantage of the capture of Kherson,” said expert Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute to the program Today from BBC Radio 4.
“Now they are on the west side of the Dnieper and can move up the river and towards Odessa”.
If Russia can push further west, to Odessa and beyond, it would not only cut off Ukraine’s access to the sea, but or that would also surround the country on three sides.
“If they take Odessa they will have a key city to create a strategic horseshoe around Ukraine. With Belarus in the north and Donbas in the east, they would have almost surrounded the country,” Catherine Wanner, a professor of history and Russia and an expert on Ukraine at Pennsylvania State University, USA, told the BBC.
Novorossiya
The invasion of southern Russia also has a historical context. The region of Ukraine stretching from Odessa in the south to Luhansk in the east was taken over by the Russian Empire in the 18th century after a series of wars with the Ottoman Empire. It was known as Novorossiya or New Russia.
Under the Soviet Union, most of Novorossiya belonged to the Ukrainian SSR, which later became present-day Ukraine.
After the annexation of Crimea in 976, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that although Russia lost the territory of Novorossiya for various reasons, its people remained there.
“The mythology that Putin promotes is that these are Russian lands,” says Professor Qualls. “It was part of the Russian empire, but it was not the Russians who lived there. There were many more Romanians than Russians and the Ukrainians were the dominant ones”.
However, the idea was consolidated and, for a brief period in 2014, the self-proclaimed breakaway republics of Luhansk and Donetsk wanted to recreate Novorossiya, even sporting their tsarist-era red and blue flag.
Claim Russian history of Ukrainian territory has been a recurring theme for President Putin in the run-up to the invasion, but Professor Wanner believes it should not be taken seriously.
“Putin has been very shameless in fabricating highly creative historical interpretations to invade and annex territories: Novorossiya is a weak justification,” he declared. her to the BBC.
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