Quote Originally Posted by AmericanPride View Post
I don't think MG is a valid comparison insofar that the operation relied upon one axis of attack along one route contingent on the capture of a single bridge across a series of rivers. A Russian operation in Ukraine would be contingent on capturing a range of bridges or fording points instead of risking a single point of failure. I'm sure there's plenty of WW2 examples of massed Soviet operations across rivers.
I used Market Garden to point out how easily one could interdict a narrow avenue of approach. So let's take a look at the terrain in southern Ukraine, over which Russian forces would probably have to move if they had Odessa, Trans-Dniestria, or both as an objective. I do not have decent enough maps available to me to do a good terrain analysis, but here is a little something based on the maps I can get from Google.

A Russian "dash" from Crimea would have to pass through either one of 2 chokepoints. To the west is the wider of the 2, north of Armyans'k on Highway M17/E97. Based on the map I am viewing, the strip of land is about 6 miles wide here, but the map also shows a body of water that splits the neck into two smaller avenues of approach, each about 2 miles wide, with the major hardball running in the western one. The eastern exit from Crimea is the route that the E105/M18 takes north of Medvedivka, crossing 2 bridges over what looks like a 500 foot wide channel--depth unknown.

If the force started from somewhere in Russia, say, east of Donetsk, we need to look a little further north. From the mouth of the Dnieper to Dnepropetrovsk, I counted a total of 8 bridges and the Dnieper in this region is, I think, either too wide for most tactical bridging or the banks are not good enough --too soft, too steep, etc., for temporary bridging or the approach routes to the bridging--the map does not tell me this, but the mouth of many large rivers is pretty silty and soft.