isolating

One of the many movie scenes that took place during the soviet blockade of berlin occurred in 1948, when the United States and its allies kept an entire city alive using an airlift that landed every few minutes with food, coal and medicine. The operation highlighted a lesson that military strategists never forgot: in any war, sometimes the most important thing is not to conquer a city, but to decide who can continue to supply it. A silent return. For centuries, sieges were one of the tools more brutal and effective of the war. Surrounding a city, cutting off supplies, and waiting for hunger, exhaustion, or lack of ammunition to do the job was a military logic as old as empires themselves. Ukraine is now recovering that same idea, but adapted to the drone era. The big difference is that you no longer need to physically surround a city or send thousands of soldiers to isolate it. It is enough to control the roads, monitor movements and constantly destroy everything that enters or leaves. What is happening around Mariupol It is beginning to look less like a traditional war and more like a medieval siege executed from the air and hundreds of kilometers away. Mariupol as a laboratory. After conquering Mariupol in 2022, Russia turned the city into one of the ggreat logistics centers of its southern front, using its roads and port to move fuel, ammunition, troops and equipment towards Donetsk and Zaporizhia. Ukraine has started to attack precisely that circulation network. Reconnaissance and attack drones patrol the main access routes to the city looking for tanker trucks, ammunition transports or logistical convoys. The logic is extremely simple and very old: There is no need to destroy a fortified position if you can prevent it from continuing to function. According to different military sources and published videos by Ukrainian units, some drones already operate up to 160 kilometers within of territory controlled by Russia, turning entire roads into permanent risk zones for any Russian military vehicle. Turn logistics into the new front. The most important transformation of this strategy is that the main objective is no longer necessarily soldiers, tanks or trenches. They are the supplies. Ukraine is exploiting a classic vulnerability: any army depends on fuel, food, ammunition and constant transportation to maintain positions. The drones greatly facilitate that job because logistics trucks are relatively easy targets: they follow predictable routes, have little protection and often transport extremely flammable or explosive material. Even small ammunition can destroy them completely. That explains why Ukraine is dedicating so many resources to chasing supply vehicles instead of directly attacking fortified positions that are much more difficult to neutralize. From Mariupol to Moscow. The same logic also appears behind the massive drone attacks against Moscow. They remembered in Insider that Ukraine no longer uses only small improvised FPVs near the front. Now deploy long-range platforms such as FP-1 Firepointthe RS-1 Bars or the new Bars-SM Gladiatorhybrid drones between a cruise missile and unmanned aircraft capable of traveling hundreds of kilometers and crossing one of the densest anti-aircraft networks in the world. The objective is not only to cause specific damage, but to force Russia to disperse defensesspending resources and living under constant pressure even far from the front. The attack with more than 120 drones on the Moscow region demonstrates the extent to which Ukraine attempts to transfer the logic of attrition and isolation far beyond the traditional battle lines. A battle for movement. What is really important is that Ukraine seems to be redefining a fundamental idea of modern warfare: it is no longer necessary to completely control the terrain to control the situation. Just control movement. If any road can be surveilled by drones, any convoy can be destroyed and any resupply can end up intercepted, maintaining a position begins to be much more difficult even if the enemy retains numerical superiority. There is no doubt, that profoundly changes traditional military logic. The future sieges They may no longer be represented with circles surrounding cities on a map, but with invisible networks of drones capable of slowly collapsing enemy logistics without the need for major ground offensives. The war in Ukraine is demonstrating precisely that: that today you can isolate a city, wear down an army and force it to abandon positions without moving practically a single soldier. Image | Pexels In Xataka | Once again, Ukraine has opened a missile launched by Russia. Once again, surprising manufacturers have been found In Xataka | Russia has been advancing at a snail’s pace in Ukraine for months. That’s about to change because of one season: summer.