AFAIK the major thing russia wants is their warm water harbor for their ships since almost all of their other harbors freeze over, extremely.
looking at the online map; donetsk is the city closest to the black sea. kharkiv is one of the biggest transportation hub cities in the area and the russians holding that city absolutely cripples the supply line.
again this is just another Scientific Wild Ass Guess
One is the several causes of the war was the Ukraine stopping a river from flowing into the Crimean peninsula. Without the river salt from the Black Sea was starting to contaminate the soil. The harvest there was being impacted and the ability to feed the citizens there was a well. Without a way to guarantee the flow of water for the long term, Russia can't just hold the ground. The site is the dam happens to be exactly where the Ukraine army is trying to break Russia's defenses and the Ukrainians have a toe hold on both sides of the river at that location right now.
Article about the dam: http://archive.today/2022.06.16-144758/https://www.npr.org/2022/06/12/1104418128/russia-ukraine-crimea-water-canal
it's npr so i'll have a little salt with what they report, but that is interesting. funny how food and water have been in the roots of many wars through out history.
i need to start paying more attention
I've read it other places as well. Not surprisingly, the algorithm pushed NPR towards the top of the results and I just went with the low hanging fruit.
(post is archived)