Russia Closes M-14 Highway to Crimea as Ukrainian Drones Hit Supply Trucks Daily
Russia has closed the M-14 highway, its main route from Rostov-on-Don to occupied Crimea, to civilian traffic. Ukrainian drones are hitting Russian supply trucks along the route at a near-daily clip. On 22 May, Vladimir Saldo, Russia’s installed governor of occupied Kherson Oblast, signed a decree suspending traffic on the section of the M-14 highway running through occupied Kherson to the Dzhankoi checkpoint in northern Crimea. Ukrainian middle-range drone strikes — those traveling as far as 200 km — more than doubled between February and March. Drones drove some 96% of Russia’s March casualties. Russia continued losing ground through April.
The M-14 and the H-20 highway branching off it in Mariupol are the main focuses of Ukraine’s drone-counterlogistics campaign. The pattern echoes the earlier counterlogistics use of drones on the Kherson stretch of the M-14 before Russia deployed anti-drone nets along that section. Ukraine recaptured more ground than Russia took in February for the first time since the August 2024 Kursk incursion, and Russia continued losing ground through April. The closure is one of the strongest operational indicators yet that Russia’s spring offensive is floundering and that Ukrainian midrange-drone capability is materially changing the logistics calculus of the war — even as Russia continues large-scale Shahed barrages on Ukrainian cities and as Ukraine struggles with the parallel air-defence missile shortage caused by the Iran-war redirect of US Patriot inventory.