Following in the Wake of John Paul Jones, Ukrainians Fight For the Kinburn Spit
The strategic value of this pincer hold over a three-mile-wide water channel has been recognized — and fought over — since the days of Homer and the Ancient Greeks.
Crossing the Gulf of Dnipro in inflatable speed boats, Ukrainian special forces are fighting to reopen Ukraine’s river gate to the Black Sea, a chokepoint so strategic that the founder of the United States Navy, John Paul Jones, fought over the same strip of sand in 1787.
From that land, the Kinburn Spit, the Russians have launched missile, drone, and artillery attacks on Odessa and Mykolaiv, each city about 35 miles away. Russian guns have controlled shipping through the mouth of the Dnipro, a mighty waterway seen as the Mississippi of Ukraine.
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